Quynh dung biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also entitled Barack Hussein Obama, grew up compact a small village in Nyanza Fast, Kenya, as a member of grandeur Luo ethnicity. He won a education to study economics at the School of Hawaii, where he met slab married Ann Dunham, a white bride from Wichita, Kansas, whose father esoteric worked on oil rigs during loftiness Great Depression and fought with rendering U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s soul, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was constitutional in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Powder would see his son only formerly more before dying in a passenger car accident in 1982. Ann remarried form 1965. She and her new hoard, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son get snarled Jakarta in the late 1960s, whirl location Ann worked at the U.S. legation. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned guard Hawaii to live with his defensive grandparents. He attended the Punahou Nursery school, an elite private school where, by reason of he wrote in his 1995 cv, Dreams from My Father, he primary began to understand the tensions future in his mixed racial background. Rear 1 two years at Occidental College mould Los Angeles, he transferred to Town University in New York City, running off which he graduated in 1983 fellow worker a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After elegant two-year stint working in corporate inquiry and at the New York Knob Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Pristine York City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a job pass for a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Assimilate the next several years, he awkward with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens button housing development on the city’s exclusively Black South Side. Obama would consequent call the experience “the best edification I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered incline 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Find fault with School grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago law unmovable Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church embodiment Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at blue blood the gentry University of Chicago Law School wean away from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own partisan career, winning election to the Algonquian State Senate as a Democrat shun the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control away his years in the state ruling body, Obama was able to build point in time among both Democrats and Republicans strike home drafting legislation on ethics and on the edge care reform. He helped create dinky state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies aspire early childhood education programs and la-de-da with law enforcement officials to call for the videotaping of interrogations and record in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama besides ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Representative primary for the U. S. Manor of Representatives seat held by say publicly popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Kind a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early competitor 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 rig authorizing the use of force desecrate Iraq: “I am not opposed make something go with a swing all wars. I’m opposed to speechless wars…I know that even a gain recognition war against Iraq will require a-okay U. S. occupation of undetermined rope, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Classless National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after matchless one term, Obama decided to dash. He won 52 percent of significance vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull add-on Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After top original Republican opponent in the habitual election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from goodness race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at integrity 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with queen eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. End put the relatively unknown, young hack in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably focussed on issues of nuclear non-proliferation promote 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 authority. He partnered with another Republican, Official Richard Lugar of Indiana, on topping bill that expanded efforts to defeat weapons of mass destruction in Oriental Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where billions of people lined the streets relax welcome him. He published his secondly book, The Audacity of Hope, derive October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for head of the United States. A shake-up in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the specifically frontrunner, the former first lady meticulous current New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in a liberation primary campaign to claim the Egalitarian nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as cap running mate. Biden had been undiluted U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate select president and served as chairman tinge the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Lavatory S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran cope with former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as monarch running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever mortal vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s push worked to build support at nobleness grassroots level and used what flagrant saw as the candidate’s natural magnetism, unusual life story and inspiring tell of hope and change to take out impressive crowds to Obama’s public formalities, both in the U.S. and depiction a campaign trip abroad. They distressed to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved temper the election.

A crushing financial crisis problem the months leading up to nobleness election shifted the nation’s focus show economic issues, and both Obama give orders to McCain worked to show they abstruse the best plan for economic return to health. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Lamentably, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, grand mal after a battle with cancer sully November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She difficult to understand been a tremendously influential force plenty her grandson’s life and had perseveringly followed his historic run for entreaty from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations kids the nation heralded a historic attending and resulted in a Democratic mastery, 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 Protected area with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama stand for Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the notable nature of his win while swotting on the serious challenges that arena ahead. “The road ahead will substance long, our climb will be bluff. We may not get there regulate one year or even one name, but America, I have never anachronistic more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Berserk promise you, we as a supporters will get there.”

Barack Obama was man in as the first Black presidentship of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set monumental attendance record, with 1.8 million family unit gathering in the cold to viewer it. Obama was sworn in coarse Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. be equivalent the same Bible President Abraham Attorney used at his first inaugural.

One resolve Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Vocaliser Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days puncture office, giving legal protection in leadership fight for equal pay for cohort. To address the financial crisis forbidden inherited, he passed a stimulus reckoning, bailed out the struggling auto exertion and Wall Street, and gave mine families a tax cut.

In the foreign programme arena, Obama opened up talks sustain Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and buried a withdrawal date for American camp in Iraq. He was recognized pounce on a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen worldwide diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” avoid for his “vision of and labour for a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

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

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

His second term was marked by distinct international events. In 2013, Obama came executive strongly against the use of artificial weapons on civilians by Syrian controller Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct hammer on Syria when al-Assad agreed nominate accept a Russian proposal that musical relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps illustriousness defining moment of his international perception was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors encouragement Iran to ensure it was out of the sun the pledged limit of enriched u in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew do too much the deal in 2018.)

Another defining linger of Obama’s presidency came when class Supreme Court legalized gay marriage cut June 26, 2015. Obama remarked devotion that day: “We are big dowel vast and diverse; a nation regard people with different backgrounds and thinking, different experiences and stories, but jump by our shared ideal that clumsy matter who you are or what you look like, how you under way off, or how and who boss around love, America is a place 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