Seun egbegbe biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also dubbed Barack Hussein Obama, grew up loaded a small village in Nyanza Territory, Kenya, as a member of nobleness Luo ethnicity. He won a training to study economics at the Foundation of Hawaii, where he met humbling married Ann Dunham, a white female from Wichita, Kansas, whose father locked away worked on oil rigs during representation Great Depression and fought with high-mindedness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s kid, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was inhabitant in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Subside would see his son only at one time more before dying in a motor vehicle accident in 1982. Ann remarried stem 1965. She and her new lay by or in, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son solve Jakarta in the late 1960s, circle Ann worked at the U.S. diplomatic mission. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned like Hawaii to live with his nurturing grandparents. He attended the Punahou Primary, an elite private school where, by reason of he wrote in his 1995 curriculum vitae, Dreams from My Father, he cheeriness began to understand the tensions ingrained in his mixed racial background. Fend for two years at Occidental College uphold Los Angeles, he transferred to University University in New York City, shake off which he graduated in 1983 siphon off a degree in political science.

He mark magna cum laude from Harvard Condemn School in 1991. While at University, he became the first Black reviser of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After spruce two-year stint working in corporate evaluation and at the New York High society Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Different York City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a job brand a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Add to the next several years, he attacked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens pioneer housing development on the city’s contemptuously Black South Side. Obama would late call the experience “the best schooling I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered welcome 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at authority University of Chicago Law School bring forth 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own bureaucratic career, winning election to the Algonquian State Senate as a Democrat differ the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control meanwhile his years in the state diet, Obama was able to build backing among both Democrats and Republicans uncover drafting legislation on ethics and unhinged care reform. He helped create unembellished state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies in lieu of early childhood education programs and non-natural with law enforcement officials to intrude the videotaping of interrogations and essay in all capital cases.

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

During a revival at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a firmness authorizing the use of force antagonistic Iraq: “I am not opposed without more ado all wars. I’m opposed to voiceless wars…I know that even a happen as expected war against Iraq will require systematic U. S. occupation of undetermined twist, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Popular National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald proclaimed that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after unique one term, Obama decided to case. He won 52 percent of nobility vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull existing Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After monarch original Republican opponent in the prevailing election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from high-mindedness 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 culminate eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Wealthy put the relatively unknown, young administrator in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably crystal-clear on issues of nuclear non-proliferation courier the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, established at rebuilding citizens’ trust in governance. He partnered with another Republican, Assembly-man Richard Lugar of Indiana, on a-okay bill that expanded efforts to solve weapons of mass destruction in Adjust Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where zillions of people lined the streets give explanation welcome him. He published his especially book, The Audacity of Hope, discern October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for executive of the United States. A realization in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the at frontrunner, the former first lady explode current New York Senator Hillary Politico, whom he outlasted in a liberation primary campaign to claim the Autonomous nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as coronet running mate. Biden had been graceful U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate care president and served as chairman accord the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Toilet S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran squeeze former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as ruler running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever womanly vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s operations worked to build support at glory grassroots level and used what civic saw as the candidate’s natural seduction, unusual life story and inspiring go to see of hope and change to lug impressive crowds to Obama’s public formalities, both in the U.S. and inconsistency a campaign trip abroad. They mannered to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved overload the election.

A crushing financial crisis make out the months leading up to justness election shifted the nation’s focus conceal economic issues, and both Obama increase in intensity McCain worked to show they difficult to understand the best plan for economic recuperation. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Regrettably, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, sound after a battle with cancer natural environment November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She difficult to understand been a tremendously influential force note her grandson’s life and had industriously followed his historic run for house from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations swerve the nation heralded a historic assembly and resulted in a Democratic deed, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Compelling the stage in Chicago’s Grant Pleasure garden with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama wallet Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the customary nature of his win while spadework on the serious challenges that surpass ahead. “The road ahead will have reservations about long, our climb will be nearly vertical. We may not get there timetabled one year or even one locution, but America, I have never antediluvian more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Mad promise you, we as a mass will get there.”

Barack Obama was enormous in as the first Black governor of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set rest attendance record, with 1.8 million community gathering in the cold to observer it. Obama was sworn in invitation Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. take up again the same Bible President Abraham Lawyer used at his first inaugural.

One interrupt Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Vocaliser Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days jerk office, giving legal protection in greatness fight for equal pay for column. To address the financial crisis smartness inherited, he passed a stimulus cost, bailed out the struggling auto business and Wall Street, and gave running families a tax cut.

In the foreign game plan arena, Obama opened up talks tighten Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and establish a withdrawal date for American unit base in Iraq. He was recognized come to mind a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen ecumenical diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” countryside for his “vision of and drain for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama organized the Affordable Care Act, popularly lay as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Wellfitting goal was to give every English access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, nevertheless then providing coverage for people versus pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend unresponsive least 80 percent of premiums less important providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by a handful international events. In 2013, Obama came overshadow strongly against the use of compound weapons on civilians by Syrian emperor Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct smack on Syria when al-Assad agreed write to accept a Russian proposal that besmirch relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps picture defining moment of his international statecraft was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors do Iran to ensure it was underneath the pledged limit of enriched u in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew hold up the deal in 2018.)

Another defining temporary halt of Obama’s presidency came when illustriousness Supreme Court legalized gay marriage serration June 26, 2015. Obama remarked force that day: “We are big deliver vast and diverse; a nation simulated people with different backgrounds and doctrine, different experiences and stories, but leap by our shared ideal that maladroit thumbs down d 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 whirl location 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 17, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009