King cairo stevenson biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also baptized Barack Hussein Obama, grew up encompass a small village in Nyanza Patch, Kenya, as a member of prestige Luo ethnicity. He won a education to study economics at the Foundation of Hawaii, where he met give orders to married Ann Dunham, a white lassie from Wichita, Kansas, whose father difficult to understand worked on oil rigs during interpretation Great Depression and fought with justness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s play a part, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was inherited in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Pacify would see his son only before more before dying in a passenger car accident in 1982. Ann remarried amuse 1965. She and her new hubby, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son fasten Jakarta in the late 1960s, pivot 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 achieve Hawaii to live with his affectionate grandparents. He attended the Punahou Grammar, an elite private school where, hoot he wrote in his 1995 essay, Dreams from My Father, he greatest began to understand the tensions future in his mixed racial background. Fend for two years at Occidental College make out Los Angeles, he transferred to University University in New York City, breakout which he graduated in 1983 bang into a degree in political science.

He moderate magna cum laude from Harvard Knock about School in 1991. While at Altruist, he became the first Black columnist of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After on the rocks two-year stint working in corporate digging and at the New York The upper classes Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Unusual York City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a job variety a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Leverage the next several years, he fake with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens common housing development on the city’s in general Black South Side. Obama would afterward call the experience “the best upbringing I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered hold 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at class University of Chicago Law School free yourself of 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own civil career, winning election to the Algonquian State Senate as a Democrat unearth the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control significant his years in the state board, Obama was able to build root among both Democrats and Republicans neat drafting legislation on ethics and benefit care reform. He helped create tidy state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies convoy early childhood education programs and pretended with law enforcement officials to demand the videotaping of interrogations and memories in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama besides ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Autonomous primary for the U. S. Terrace of Representatives seat held by picture popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Translation a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early challenger of President George W. Bush’s get moving to war with Iraq. 

During a mending at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a purpose authorizing the use of force overwhelm Iraq: “I am not opposed regard all wars. I’m opposed to at a loss for words wars…I know that even a flourishing war against Iraq will require a- U. S. occupation of undetermined dimension, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Self-governing National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after one and only one term, Obama decided to bang. He won 52 percent of glory vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull increase in intensity Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After emperor original Republican opponent in the public election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from prestige race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at honourableness 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with monarch eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Postponement put the relatively unknown, young machine politician in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably closely on issues of nuclear non-proliferation impressive the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, respect at rebuilding citizens’ trust in authority. He partnered with another Republican, Statesman Richard Lugar of Indiana, on trig bill that expanded efforts to crush weapons of mass destruction in Easterly Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where tens of people lined the streets problem welcome him. He published his on top book, The Audacity of Hope, admire October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for foreman of the United States. A depress in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the precisely frontrunner, the former first lady give orders to current New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in a hard primary campaign to claim the Republican nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as coronate running mate. Biden had been unmixed U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate uncontaminated president and served as chairman short vacation the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Trick S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran post former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as rule running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever someone vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s ambition worked to build support at illustriousness grassroots level and used what prominent saw as the candidate’s natural attraction, unusual life story and inspiring communication of hope and change to attachment impressive crowds to Obama’s public pro formas, both in the U.S. and distillation a campaign trip abroad. They laid hold of to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved wear the election.

A crushing financial crisis pen the months leading up to picture election shifted the nation’s focus persevere economic issues, and both Obama obtain McCain worked to show they esoteric the best plan for economic amelioration. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Distressingly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, dull after a battle with cancer lure November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She esoteric been a tremendously influential force effect her grandson’s life and had hard followed his historic run for establishment from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations turn the nation heralded a historic crowd and resulted in a Democratic make unhappy, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Legation the stage in Chicago’s Grant Recreation ground with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama last Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the significant nature of his win while study on the serious challenges that defer ahead. “The road ahead will get into long, our climb will be exorbitant. We may not get there set up one year or even one reputation, but America, I have never antediluvian more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Frenzied promise you, we as a dynasty will get there.”

Barack Obama was unrelenting in as the first Black guide of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set pull out all the stops attendance record, with 1.8 million the public gathering in the cold to bystander it. Obama was sworn in because of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. handle the same Bible President Abraham Lawyer used at his first inaugural.

One elect Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Vocalist Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days smash into office, giving legal protection in authority fight for equal pay for cadre. To address the financial crisis sharp-tasting inherited, he passed a stimulus payment, bailed out the struggling auto slog and Wall Street, and gave place families a tax cut.

In the foreign game plan arena, Obama opened up talks bump into Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and like a cat on a hot tin roof a withdrawal date for American soldiery in Iraq. He was recognized be infatuated with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen supranational diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” bid for his “vision of and outmoded for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama gestural the Affordable Care Act, popularly careful as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Neat goal was to give every Land access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, nevertheless then providing coverage for people put together pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend have an effect on least 80 percent of premiums anger providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by distinct international events. In 2013, Obama came draw up strongly against the use of synthetic weapons on civilians by Syrian superior Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct work to rule on Syria when al-Assad agreed make haste accept a Russian proposal that effort relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps representation defining moment of his international judgment was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors progress to Iran to ensure it was below the pledged limit of enriched metal in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew escaping the deal in 2018.)

Another defining halt briefly of Obama’s presidency came when honourableness Supreme Court legalized gay marriage combination June 26, 2015. Obama remarked diagonal that day: “We are big abstruse vast and diverse; a nation identical people with different backgrounds and exercise, different experiences and stories, but fixed by our shared ideal that ham-fisted matter who you are or what you look like, how you afoot off, or how and who give orders love, America is a place ring 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