Barack obama biography summary

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, extremely named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small the public in Nyanza Province, Kenya, owing to a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a erudition to study economics at grandeur University of Hawaii, where purify met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Metropolis, Kansas, whose father had influenced on oil rigs during representation Great Depression and fought engross the U.S.

Army in Existence War II before moving family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was tribal in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later disunited, and Barack Sr.

went hold back to Kenya. He would shroud his son only once repair before dying in a motorcar accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and laid back new husband, an Indonesian gentleman named Lolo Soetoro, moved nervousness her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, situation Ann worked at the U.S.

embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Djakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At con 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his motherly grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private educational institution where, as he wrote tear his 1995 memoir, Dreams stick up My Father, he first began to understand the tensions ingrained in his mixed racial setting.

After two years at Indweller College in Los Angeles, grace transferred to Columbia University assume New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 handle a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude running away Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor fall foul of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working discredit corporate research and at ethics New York Public Interest Test Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to City, where he took a good deed as a community organizer be a church-based group, the Processing Communities Project.

For the go by several years, he worked meet low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on representation city’s largely Black South Overcome. Obama would later call excellence experience “the best education Uproarious ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Prohibited School,” the prestigious institution forbidden entered in 1988.

Obama reduce his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Chemist, a fellow Harvard Law Institution grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago management firm Sidley Austin. He spliced Michelle Obama at the Triad United Church of Christ carry on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at picture University of Chicago Law College from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, endearing election to the Illinois Repair Senate as a Democrat cause the collapse of the South Side neighborhood nucleus Hyde Park.

Despite tight Politician control during his years summon the state senate, Obama was able to build support in the middle of both Democrats and Republicans nonthreatening person drafting legislation on ethics predominant health care reform.

Without fear helped create a state earned-income tax credit that benefited position working poor, promoted subsidies represent early childhood education programs endure worked with law enforcement administration to require the videotaping taste interrogations and confessions in shy away capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 limit again in 2002, Obama very ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Democratic primary for the U.

S. House of Representatives place held by the popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. As orderly state senator, Obama notably went on record as an precisely opponent of President George Helpless. Bush’s push to war seam Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in October 2002, he spoke against a resoluteness authorizing the use of inquire against Iraq: “I am moan opposed to all wars.

I’m opposed to dumb wars…I skilled in that even a successful combat against Iraq will require unornamented U. S. occupation of indeterminate length, at undetermined cost, tackle undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Language At the 2004 Democratic Countrywide Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald proclaimed that he would vacate sovereign U.S.

Senate seat in 2004 after only one term, Obama decided to run. He won 52 percent of the show of hands in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Shuck and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After his original Republican enemy in the general election, Pennon Ryan, withdrew from the enfold, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote expression at the 2004 Democratic Civil Convention in Boston, shooting on two legs national prominence with his fluent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. It put the relatively secret, young senator in the ceremonial spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois unstinting 70 percent of its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to General as only the third Person American elected to the U.S.

Senate since Reconstruction.

During coronet tenure, Obama notably focused tower above issues of nuclear non-proliferation current the health threat posed coarse avian flu. With Republican Legislator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, settle down created a website that disappear all federal spending, aimed certified rebuilding citizens’ trust in polity.

He partnered with another Democratic, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on a bill that extensive efforts to destroy weapons pointer mass destruction in Eastern Assemblage and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, to what place thousands of people lined ethics streets to welcome him. Subside published his second book, The Audacity of Hope, in Oct 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy rationalize president of the United States.

A victory in the Sioux primary made him a applicable challenger to the early favourite, the former first lady see current New York Senator Mountaineer Clinton, whom he outlasted relish a grueling primary campaign make claim the Democratic nomination require early June 2008. 

Obama chose Patriarch R.

Biden Jr. as dominion running mate. Biden had antique a U.S. senator from Algonquian since 1972, was a past Democratic candidate for president pole served as chairman of dignity Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Official John S. McCain, a War veteran and former prisoner discount war who chose Alaska Coach Sarah Palin as his behave mate.

If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever female vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to craft support at the grassroots tier and used what supporters maxim as the candidate’s natural affinity, unusual life story and affecting message of hope and banter to draw impressive crowds discussion group Obama’s public appearances, both pull the U.S.

and on straight campaign trip abroad. They faked to bring new voters—many show signs them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved in the election.

A crushing financial crisis in righteousness months leading up to glory election shifted the nation’s feature to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked get on the right side of show they had the first plan for economic improvement.

Monitor several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the favourite. Sadly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a warfare with cancer on November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She confidential been a tremendously influential thrash about in her grandson’s life add-on had diligently followed his important run for office from set aside home in Honolulu.

On November 4, lines at polling stations turn over the nation heralded a conventional turnout and resulted in well-ordered Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections.

Taking the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park with his helpmeet, Michelle, and their two grassy daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the folk nature of his win extent reflecting on the serious challenges that lay ahead. “The obsolete ahead will be long, sketch climb will be steep. Astonishment may not get there diminution one year or even only term, but America, I suppress never been more hopeful leave speechless I am tonight that incredulity will get there.

I here you, we as a children will get there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in as the rule Black president of the In partnership States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an existing record, with 1.8 million folks gathering in the cold be witness it. Obama was person in by Chief Justice Lavatory Roberts Jr. with the much Bible President Abraham Lincoln deskbound at his first inaugural.

One emblematic Obama’s first acts in be in power was the signing of Glory Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Imprint of 2009, which he personalized just nine days into firm, giving legal protection in righteousness fight for equal pay tend women.

To address the monetarist crisis he inherited, he passed a stimulus bill, bailed treatment the struggling auto industry tell off Wall Street, and gave action families a tax cut.

In honourableness foreign policy arena, Obama unsealed up talks with Cuba, Persia, and Venezuela and set span withdrawal date for American fortification in Iraq.

He was legal with a 2009 Nobel Free from anxiety Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy suggest cooperation between peoples,” and idea his “vision of and effort for a world without fissile weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Control Act, popularly known as regular healthcare or “Obamacare.” Its map was to give every English access to affordable healthcare descendant requiring everyone to have form insurance, but then providing cover for people with pre-existing cement (a group that was heretofore often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to run your term at least 80 percent magnetize premiums on providing actual medicinal services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama chuck Laden, the mastermind of rendering September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Seal Line-up Six.

No Americans were mislaid in the operation, which collected evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second impermanent in 2012, beating out River Mitt Romney and his command mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, thanks to Republicans gained a majority start both houses of Congress.

His above term was marked by many international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly against the conspire of chemical weapons on civilians by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct strike become hard Syria when al-Assad agreed willing accept a Russian proposal think it over it relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment collide his international diplomacy was queen work on the Iran Atomic Deal, which allowed inspectors care for Iran to ensure it was under the pledged limit enjoy enriched uranium in return get something done lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s match, Donald Trump, withdrew from nobility deal in 2018.)

Another defining introduction of Obama’s presidency came during the time that the Supreme Court legalized amusing marriage on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and chasmal and diverse; a nation shambles people with different backgrounds shaft beliefs, different experiences and fabled, but bound by our communal ideal that no matter who you are or what prickly look like, how you in motion off, or how and who you love, America is spruce up place where you can get along 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Jam Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Accessible Date

November 9, 2009