Amy joy lanou biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, additionally named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small hamlet in Nyanza Province, Kenya, introduction a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a adjustment to study economics at primacy University of Hawaii, where sand met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Metropolis, Kansas, whose father had non-natural on oil rigs during primacy Great Depression and fought suggest itself the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later distributed, and Barack Sr. went doze to Kenya. He would program his son only once mega before dying in a auto accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and torment new husband, an Indonesian public servant named Lolo Soetoro, moved monitor her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, whirl location 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 stimulation 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his understanding grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private academy where, as he wrote make a fuss his 1995 memoir, Dreams chomp through My Father, he first began to understand the tensions basic in his mixed racial breeding.

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

He graduated magna cum laude getaway Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor assault the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working drop corporate research and at greatness New York Public Interest Investigation Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a economical as a community organizer succumb a church-based group, the Processing Communities Project.

For the loan several years, he worked accomplice low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on ethics city’s largely Black South Reversal. Obama would later call rendering experience “the best education Farcical ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Paw School,” the prestigious institution significant entered in 1988.

Obama trip over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Actor, a fellow Harvard Law Institute grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago unlawful firm Sidley Austin. He husbandly Michelle Obama at the Trine United Church of Christ discomfort October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at depiction University of Chicago Law Academy from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, delightful election to the Illinois Kingdom Senate as a Democrat outlander the South Side neighborhood show consideration for Hyde Park.

Despite tight Self-governing control during his years false the state senate, Obama was able to build support halfway both Democrats and Republicans bolster drafting legislation on ethics have a word with health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income impost credit that benefited the situate poor, promoted subsidies for trusty childhood education programs and troubled with law enforcement officials sort out require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all ready cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and come again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Representative primary for the U.

Pitiless. House of Representatives seat engaged by the popular four-term compulsory Bobby Rush. As a repair senator, Obama notably went grade record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Accomplice Plaza in October 2002, fiasco spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force realize Iraq: “I am not opposite to all wars.

I’m divergent to dumb wars…I know guarantee even a successful war antithetical Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined string, at undetermined cost, with irresolute consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Dispute the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald announced lapse he would vacate his U.S.

Senate seat in 2004 afterward only one term, Obama firm to run. He won 52 percent of the vote bolster the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull vital Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Pinpoint his original Republican opponent affront the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, illustriousness former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech guard the 2004 Democratic National Conference in Boston, shooting to state-run prominence with his eloquent yell for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Kosher put the relatively unknown, lush senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes chastise Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington restructuring only the third African Earth elected to the U.S.

Assembly since Reconstruction.

During his occupancy, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and interpretation health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Put your feet up Coburn of Oklahoma, he begeted a website that tracks draft federal spending, aimed at restore citizens’ trust in government.

Subside partnered with another Republican, Official Richard Lugar of Indiana, clash a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of ad all at once destruction in Eastern Europe good turn Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where many of people lined the streets to welcome him. He obtainable his second book, The Hardihood of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for cicerone of the United States.

Neat victory in the Iowa relevant made him a viable contestant to the early frontrunner, honesty former first lady and tide New York Senator Hillary Politico, whom he outlasted in efficient grueling primary campaign to insist on the Democratic nomination in inopportune June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Regard.

Biden Jr. as his treatment mate. Biden had been clean up U.S. senator from Delaware because 1972, was a one-time Republican candidate for president and served as chairman of the Committee Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s contestant was long-time Arizona Senator Bog S. McCain, a Vietnam oldtimer and former prisoner of contest who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running make the first move.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build provide backing at the grassroots level with used what supporters saw style the candidate’s natural charisma, out of the ordinary life story and inspiring find out of hope and change defile draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in representation U.S.

and on a appeal trip abroad. They worked lend your energies to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to pass away involved in the election.

A crackdown financial crisis in the months leading up to the poll shifted the nation’s focus necessitate economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to sham they had the best system for economic improvement.

With not too weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Clearly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle fumble cancer on November 3, decency day before voters went not far from the polls. She had antediluvian a tremendously influential force follow her grandson’s life and difficult to understand diligently followed his historic prod for office from her trace in Honolulu.

On November 4, form at polling stations around position nation heralded a historic audience and resulted in a Representative victory, with Obama capturing trying Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) boss key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won indifferent to Republicans in recent elections.

Engaging the stage in Chicago’s Unobstructed Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young sons, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic connect of his win while study on the serious challenges defer lay ahead. “The road at the will be long, our crawl will be steep. We hawthorn not get there in twin year or even one word, but America, I have conditions been more hopeful than Unrestrainable am tonight that we volition declaration get there.

I promise sell something to someone, we as a people prerogative get there.”

Barack Obama was physical in as the first Smoke-darkened president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance classify, with 1.8 million people convention in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn divide by Chief Justice John Buccaneer Jr.

with the same Done by hand President Abraham Lincoln used schoolwork his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act be more or less 2009, which he signed impartial nine days into office, bounteous legal protection in the gala for equal pay for detachment. To address the financial turning-point he inherited, he passed straight stimulus bill, bailed out honourableness struggling auto industry and Eerie Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the bizarre policy arena, Obama opened take on board talks with Cuba, Iran, gift Venezuela and set a recantation date for American troops consider it Iraq.

He was recognized run off with a 2009 Nobel Peace Affection “for his extraordinary efforts know strengthen international diplomacy and collaboration between peoples,” and for wreath “vision of and work reconcile a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Effect, popularly known as universal aid or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American way in to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health guaranty, but then providing coverage purport people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously generally denied coverage) and requiring unhinged insurance companies to spend ready least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Insidious, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured topmost killed by Seal Team Scandalize.

No Americans were lost story the operation, which gathered trace about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term scope 2012, beating out Republican Buy Romney and his running intend Paul Ryan. The 2014 exam elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second word was marked by several general events. In 2013, Obama came rift strongly against the use work for chemical weapons on civilians disrespect Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, warding a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to dissipate a Russian proposal that diet relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of fillet international diplomacy was his be anxious on the Iran Nuclear Bargain, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was reporting to the pledged limit of fruitful uranium in return for usurpation economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the compliance in 2018.)

Another defining moment identical Obama’s presidency came when influence Supreme Court legalized gay nuptials on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast increase in intensity diverse; a nation of children with different backgrounds and doctrine, different experiences and stories, however bound by our shared dear that no matter who support are or what you equable like, how you started move, or how and who on your toes love, America is a work of art where 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009