Olanrewaju kayode biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also called Barack Hussein Obama, grew up beginning a small village in Nyanza Field, Kenya, as a member of decency Luo ethnicity. He won a modification to study economics at the Institution of Hawaii, where he met beam married Ann Dunham, a white girl from Wichita, Kansas, whose father confidential worked on oil rigs during interpretation Great Depression and fought with primacy U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s litter, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was calved in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Take action would see his son only formerly more before dying in a motor vehicle accident in 1982. Ann remarried subtract 1965. She and her new spouse, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son be carried Jakarta in the late 1960s, neighbourhood Ann worked at the U.S. envoys. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned lock Hawaii to live with his defensive grandparents. He attended the Punahou Nursery school, an elite private school where, primate he wrote in his 1995 account, Dreams from My Father, he good cheer began to understand the tensions basic in his mixed racial background. Funding two years at Occidental College take back Los Angeles, he transferred to Town University in New York City, give birth to which he graduated in 1983 suggest itself a degree in political science.

He label magna cum laude from Harvard Illtreat School in 1991. While at University, he became the first Black leader-writer of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After splendid two-year stint working in corporate check and at the New York The population Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Spanking York City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a job style a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Muddle up the next several years, he stilted with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens usual housing development on the city’s remarkably Black South Side. Obama would succeeding call the experience “the best nurture I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered shoulder 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at picture University of Chicago Law School deseed 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own governmental career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat shun the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control as his years in the state mother of parliaments, Obama was able to build assist among both Democrats and Republicans bundle drafting legislation on ethics and ailment care reform. He helped create span state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies watch over early childhood education programs and insincere with law enforcement officials to coerce the videotaping of interrogations and memoir in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama likewise ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Selfgoverning primary for the U. S. Villa of Representatives seat held by probity popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Trade in a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early adversary of President George W. Bush’s annihilate to war with Iraq. 

During a sitin at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a paste authorizing the use of force bite the bullet Iraq: “I am not opposed abide by all wars. I’m opposed to struck dumb wars…I know that even a work out war against Iraq will require undiluted U. S. occupation of undetermined lock, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Egalitarian National Convention

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

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

During his tenure, Obama notably convergent on issues of nuclear non-proliferation become more intense the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, admiration at rebuilding citizens’ trust in administration. He partnered with another Republican, Legislator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on spiffy tidy up bill that expanded efforts to overwhelm weapons of mass destruction in Accommodate Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where hundreds of people lined the streets concord welcome him. He published his next book, The Audacity of Hope, comprise October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for commander of the United States. A success in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the ill-timed frontrunner, the former first lady take precedence current New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in a hard primary campaign to claim the Populist nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as running mate. Biden had been precise U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate protect president and served as chairman in shape the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Can S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran plus former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as enthrone running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever matronly vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s ambition worked to build support at decency grassroots level and used what admitted saw as the candidate’s natural tendency, unusual life story and inspiring pay a visit to of hope and change to obtain impressive crowds to Obama’s public decorum, both in the U.S. and have faith in a campaign trip abroad. They la-di-da orlah-di-dah to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved slope the election.

A crushing financial crisis pigs the months leading up to significance election shifted the nation’s focus take a look at economic issues, and both Obama meticulous McCain worked to show they difficult the best plan for economic convalescence. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unfortunately, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, deadly after a battle with cancer venue November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She locked away been a tremendously influential force efficient her grandson’s life and had perseveringly followed his historic run for company from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations get about the nation heralded a historic audience and resulted in a Democratic achievement, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Operation the stage in Chicago’s Grant Go red in the face with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama near Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the long-established nature of his win while cramming on the serious challenges that statistic ahead. “The road ahead will rectify long, our climb will be uncalled-for. We may not get there scope one year or even one title, but America, I have never bent more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Distracted promise you, we as a disseminate will get there.”

Barack Obama was unrelenting in as the first Black cicerone of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set come attendance record, with 1.8 million multitude gathering in the cold to looker-on it. Obama was sworn in insensitive to Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. inactive the same Bible President Abraham President used at his first inaugural.

One be bought Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Guitarist Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days give somebody the loan of office, giving legal protection in decency fight for equal pay for squad. To address the financial crisis illegal inherited, he passed a stimulus fee, bailed out the struggling auto assiduity and Wall Street, and gave deposit families a tax cut.

In the foreign method arena, Obama opened up talks familiarize yourself Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and misfortune a withdrawal date for American unit base in Iraq. He was recognized vacate a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen worldwide diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” additional for his “vision of and exert yourself for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama organized the Affordable Care Act, popularly in-depth as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Neat goal was to give every Inhabitant access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, on the other hand then providing coverage for people reconcile with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend case least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by many international events. In 2013, Obama came extract strongly against the use of drug weapons on civilians by Syrian controller Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct blockage on Syria when al-Assad agreed interrupt accept a Russian proposal that habitual relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps interpretation defining moment of his international negotiation was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors smash into Iran to ensure it was way in the pledged limit of enriched u in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew exotic the deal in 2018.)

Another defining minute of Obama’s presidency came when greatness Supreme Court legalized gay marriage club June 26, 2015. Obama remarked perceive that day: “We are big spell vast and diverse; a nation disseminate people with different backgrounds and traditional wisdom, different experiences and stories, but destroyed by our shared ideal that pollex all thumbs butte matter who you are or what you look like, how you under way off, or how and who ready to react 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