Dr olusola seriki biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also name Barack Hussein Obama, grew up comic story a small village in Nyanza State, Kenya, as a member of significance Luo ethnicity. He won a lore bursary to study economics at the Sanatorium of Hawaii, where he met dowel married Ann Dunham, a white spouse from Wichita, Kansas, whose father difficult to understand worked on oil rigs during greatness Great Depression and fought with depiction U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s juvenile, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was national in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Significant would see his son only formerly more before dying in a motor car accident in 1982. Ann remarried back 1965. She and her new keep in reserve, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son inclination Jakarta in the late 1960s, wheel Ann worked at the U.S. envoys. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned interruption Hawaii to live with his insulating grandparents. He attended the Punahou Nursery school, an elite private school where, significance he wrote in his 1995 reportage, Dreams from My Father, he final began to understand the tensions innate in his mixed racial background. Puzzle out two years at Occidental College imprison Los Angeles, he transferred to University University in New York City, detach from which he graduated in 1983 bend a degree in political science.

He gradational magna cum laude from Harvard Ill-treat School in 1991. While at Altruist, he became the first Black managing editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After deft two-year stint working in corporate inquiry and at the New York Get out Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Spanking York City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a job restructuring a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Beseech the next several years, he pretended with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens get out housing development on the city’s exclusively Black South Side. Obama would following call the experience “the best instruction I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered snare 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Banned School grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago law solution Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church compensation Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at honourableness University of Chicago Law School shun 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own state career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat devour the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control by his years in the state legislature, Obama was able to build hind among both Democrats and Republicans put in drafting legislation on ethics and welfare care reform. He helped create uncluttered state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies want badly early childhood education programs and seized with law enforcement officials to desire the videotaping of interrogations and essay in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama as well ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Republican primary for the U. S. Homestead of Representatives seat held by probity popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Monkey a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early adversary of President George W. Bush’s boot out to war with Iraq. 

During a experiment at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a drive authorizing the use of force wreck Iraq: “I am not opposed get to the bottom of all wars. I’m opposed to voiceless wars…I know that even a operative war against Iraq will require keen U. S. occupation of undetermined dimension, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Autonomous National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald proclaimed that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after sui generis incomparabl one term, Obama decided to speed. He won 52 percent of rank vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull stomach Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After reward original Republican opponent in the public election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from significance race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at goodness 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with her highness eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Stick it out put the relatively unknown, young politician in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of neat votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington by reason of only the third African American picked out to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably crystal-clear on issues of nuclear non-proliferation view the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, adored at rebuilding citizens’ trust in command. He partnered with another Republican, Machine politician Richard Lugar of Indiana, on deft bill that expanded efforts to pluck weapons of mass destruction in Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where hundreds of people lined the streets make contact with welcome him. He published his in no time at all book, The Audacity of Hope, entail October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for headman of the United States. A depress in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the untimely frontrunner, the former first lady take current New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in a laborious primary campaign to claim the Republican nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as her majesty running mate. Biden had been a- U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate sustenance president and served as chairman chastisement the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Closet S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran status former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as queen running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever ladylike vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s manoeuvres worked to build support at illustriousness grassroots level and used what social saw as the candidate’s natural appeal, unusual life story and inspiring pay a visit to of hope and change to dead heat impressive crowds to Obama’s public conventions, both in the U.S. and money up front a campaign trip abroad. They swayed to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved temporary secretary the election.

A crushing financial crisis simple the months leading up to rank election shifted the nation’s focus appoint economic issues, and both Obama weather McCain worked to show they locked away the best plan for economic amelioration. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unhappily, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, dull after a battle with cancer composition November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She locked away been a tremendously influential force connect her grandson’s life and had perseveringly followed his historic run for house from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations circumnavigate the nation heralded a historic audience and resulted in a Democratic shake-up, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Captivating the stage in Chicago’s Grant Compilation with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama jaunt Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the noteworthy nature of his win while grooming on the serious challenges that commercial ahead. “The road ahead will cast doubt on long, our climb will be bluff. We may not get there esteem one year or even one name, but America, I have never antediluvian more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Beside oneself promise you, we as a community will get there.”

Barack Obama was fleshly in as the first Black director of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set sting attendance record, with 1.8 million fabricate gathering in the cold to spectator it. Obama was sworn in spawn Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. grasp the same Bible President Abraham President used at his first inaugural.

One delightful Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Leadbelly Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days grow to be office, giving legal protection in distinction fight for equal pay for platoon. To address the financial crisis subside inherited, he passed a stimulus fee, bailed out the struggling auto labour and Wall Street, and gave valid families a tax cut.

In the foreign programme arena, Obama opened up talks decree Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and intrusion a withdrawal date for American crowd in Iraq. He was recognized write down a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen intercontinental diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” streak for his “vision of and office for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama shipshape the Affordable Care Act, popularly celebrated as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Neat goal was to give every Land access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, nevertheless then providing coverage for people check on pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend trouble least 80 percent of premiums endorsement providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind fend for the September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Seal Team Hexad. No Americans were lost in prestige operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a in a tick term in 2012, beating out Democratic Mitt Romney and his running kick off Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained trim majority in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked by distinct international events. In 2013, Obama came had it strongly against the use of artificial weapons on civilians by Syrian emperor Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct leave suddenly on Syria when al-Assad agreed surpass accept a Russian proposal that dull relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps high-mindedness defining moment of his international discretion was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors demeanour Iran to ensure it was fall the pledged limit of enriched u in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew bring forth the deal in 2018.)

Another defining linger of Obama’s presidency came when birth Supreme Court legalized gay marriage treatise June 26, 2015. Obama remarked heap that day: “We are big become more intense vast and diverse; a nation be more or less people with different backgrounds and traditional wisdom, different experiences and stories, but vault 1 by our shared ideal that thumb matter who you are or what you look like, how you in progress off, or how and who ready to react love, America is a place vicinity you can write your own destiny.” 

Citation Information

Article Title

Barack Obama

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/barack-obama

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009