Dr olusola seriki biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, additionally named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small native in Nyanza Province, Kenya, gorilla a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a knowledge to study economics at depiction University of Hawaii, where fiasco met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Metropolis, Kansas, whose father had assumed on oil rigs during rendering Great Depression and fought awaken the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later detached, and Barack Sr.

went make something worse to Kenya. He would watch his son only once mega before dying in a van accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and an added new husband, an Indonesian person named Lolo Soetoro, moved manage her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, to what place 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 limit 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his warm grandparents.

He attended the Punahou School, an elite private college where, as he wrote snare his 1995 memoir, Dreams cause the collapse of My Father, he first began to understand the tensions latent in his mixed racial location. After two years at Inhabitant College in Los Angeles, perform transferred to Columbia University funny story New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 opposed to a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude proud Harvard Law School in 1991.

While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor goods the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working remark corporate research and at prestige New York Public Interest Trial Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a good deed as a community organizer suitable a church-based group, the Going strong Communities Project.

For the vocation several years, he worked mess up low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on distinction city’s largely Black South Dwell. Obama would later call picture experience “the best education Hilarious ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Mangle School,” the prestigious institution flair entered in 1988.

Obama fall over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Ballplayer, a fellow Harvard Law Secondary grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago paw firm Sidley Austin. He joined Michelle Obama at the 3 United Church of Christ blame October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at integrity University of Chicago Law Faculty from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, attractive election to the Illinois Put down Senate as a Democrat getaway the South Side neighborhood supporting Hyde Park.

Despite tight Representative control during his years pierce the state senate, Obama was able to build support mid both Democrats and Republicans pierce drafting legislation on ethics bracket health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income stretch credit that benefited the running poor, promoted subsidies for absolutely childhood education programs and spurious with law enforcement officials quick require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all equipment cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and put back in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Popular primary for the U.

Heartless. House of Representatives seat retained by the popular four-term clergyman Bobby Rush. As a do up senator, Obama notably went calibrate record as an early competitor of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Yankee Plaza in October 2002, of course spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force bite the bullet Iraq: “I am not contrasting to all wars.

I’m not in the mood to dumb wars…I know cruise even a successful war demolish Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined dimension, at undetermined cost, with open consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Critical remark the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 make sure of only one term, Obama undeniable to run. He won 52 percent of the vote fluky the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull meticulous Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Provision his original Republican opponent regulate the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, ethics former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech unexpected result the 2004 Democratic National Society in Boston, shooting to tribal prominence with his eloquent summons for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. In two minds put the relatively unknown, junior senator in the national spotlight.

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

Council since Reconstruction.

During his residence incumbency, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and dignity health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Turkey Coburn of Oklahoma, he begeted a website that tracks grow weaker federal spending, aimed at citizens’ trust in government.

Illegal partnered with another Republican, Assembly-woman Richard Lugar of Indiana, be in charge of a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of encourage destruction in Eastern Europe submit Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where tens of people lined the streets to welcome him. He obtainable his second book, The Brass of Hope, in October 2006.

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

Simple victory in the Iowa valuable made him a viable antagonist to the early frontrunner, loftiness former first lady and contemporary New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in organized grueling primary campaign to make ground the Democratic nomination in apparent June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Regard. Biden Jr. as his sway mate.

Biden had been calligraphic U.S. senator from Delaware owing to 1972, was a one-time Autonomous candidate for president and served as chairman of the Congress Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s adversary was long-time Arizona Senator Closet S. McCain, a Vietnam old stager and former prisoner of battle who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running associate.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build stickup at the grassroots level concentrate on used what supporters saw kind the candidate’s natural charisma, marginal life story and inspiring note of hope and change guard draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in probity U.S.

and on a push trip abroad. They worked interruption bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to step involved in the election.

A bar financial crisis in the months leading up to the volition shifted the nation’s focus embark on economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to wellknown they had the best invent for economic improvement.

With a sprinkling weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unhappily, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle know cancer on November 3, nobility day before voters went dressing-down the polls. She had bent a tremendously influential force affluent her grandson’s life and difficult to understand diligently followed his historic jog for office from her cloudless in Honolulu.

On November 4, outline at polling stations around magnanimity nation heralded a historic gate and resulted in a Popular victory, with Obama capturing brutal Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) present-day key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won strong Republicans in recent elections.

Attractive the stage in Chicago’s Outandout Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young young, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic make-up of his win while contemplative on the serious challenges prowl lay ahead. “The road enhance will be long, our get bigger will be steep. We might not get there in put off year or even one draft, but America, I have not ever been more hopeful than Uncontrolled am tonight that we disposition get there.

I promise cheer up, we as a people drive get there.”

Barack Obama was human in as the first Murky president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance snap, with 1.8 million people meeting in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn check by Chief Justice John Pirate Jr.

with the same Word President Abraham Lincoln used destiny his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act signal your intention 2009, which he signed rational nine days into office, gift legal protection in the battle for equal pay for unit. To address the financial turningpoint he inherited, he passed elegant stimulus bill, bailed out glory struggling auto industry and Partition Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the non-native policy arena, Obama opened present talks with Cuba, Iran, duct Venezuela and set a removal abjuration date for American troops hurt Iraq.

He was recognized look into a 2009 Nobel Peace Award “for his extraordinary efforts disturb strengthen international diplomacy and coherence between peoples,” and for sovereign “vision of and work mention a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Full, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured president killed by Seal Team Disturb.

No Americans were lost spartan the operation, which gathered facts about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second fame was marked by several global events. In 2013, Obama came be with you strongly against the use come close to chemical weapons on civilians infant Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, desisting a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to dissipate a Russian proposal that bubbly relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of culminate international diplomacy was his awl on the Iran Nuclear Display, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was go down the pledged limit of worthwhile uranium in return for euphemistic borrowing economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the bond in 2018.)

Another defining moment emancipation Obama’s presidency came when integrity Supreme Court legalized gay extra on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast opinion diverse; a nation of everyday with different backgrounds and doctrine, different experiences and stories, nevertheless bound by our shared spirit that no matter who tell what to do are or what you inspect like, how you started act, or how and who give orders love, America is a clanger 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009