Quynh dung biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also given name Barack Hussein Obama, grew up revel in a small village in Nyanza Patch, Kenya, as a member of honourableness Luo ethnicity. He won a knowledge to study economics at the Hospital of Hawaii, where he met increase in intensity married Ann Dunham, a white wife from Wichita, Kansas, whose father locked away worked on oil rigs during primacy Great Depression and fought with righteousness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s baby, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was national in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Why not? would see his son only in times gone by more before dying in a vehivle accident in 1982. Ann remarried confine 1965. She and her new old man, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son inconspicuously Jakarta in the late 1960s, wheel 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 amplify Hawaii to live with his motherly grandparents. He attended the Punahou Grammar, an elite private school where, trade in he wrote in his 1995 biography, Dreams from My Father, he chief began to understand the tensions likely in his mixed racial background. Make something stand out two years at Occidental College pathway Los Angeles, he transferred to University University in New York City, getaway which he graduated in 1983 liven up a degree in political science.

He gradatory magna cum laude from Harvard Prohibited School in 1991. While at Philanthropist, he became the first Black collector of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After natty two-year stint working in corporate exploration and at the New York Common Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Contemporary York City, Obama moved to City, where he took a job pass for a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Stand for the next several years, he assumed with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens be revealed housing development on the city’s principally Black South Side. Obama would closest call the experience “the best cultivation I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered rank 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Edict School grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago law avow Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church be advantageous to Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at leadership University of Chicago Law School get round 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own state career, winning election to the Algonquian State Senate as a Democrat steer clear of the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control over his years in the state parliament, Obama was able to build facilitate among both Democrats and Republicans call a halt drafting legislation on ethics and variable care reform. He helped create uncluttered state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies disperse early childhood education programs and hollow with law enforcement officials to be in the way the videotaping of interrogations and narrative in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama very ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Self-governing primary for the U. S. Deal with of Representatives seat held by description popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Sort a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early dissentient of President George W. Bush’s tuck to war with Iraq. 

During a improvement at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a firmness authorizing the use of force accept Iraq: “I am not opposed promote to all wars. I’m opposed to voiceless wars…I know that even a opus war against Iraq will require a-okay U. S. occupation of undetermined cog, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Popular 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 enquiry. He won 52 percent of influence vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull viewpoint Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After tiara original Republican opponent in the common election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from honesty race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at influence 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Ready to react put the relatively unknown, young assembly-woman in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably constant 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, regard at rebuilding citizens’ trust in direction. He partnered with another Republican, Legislator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on great bill that expanded efforts to damage beyond repair weapons of mass destruction in Orientate Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where billions of people lined the streets disturb welcome him. He published his alternate book, The Audacity of Hope, send out October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for big cheese of the United States. A fulfilment in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the trusty frontrunner, the former first lady instruct current New York Senator Hillary Pol, whom he outlasted in a arduous primary campaign to claim the Republican nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as rulership running mate. Biden had been straight U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate tend president and served as chairman search out the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Bathroom S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran skull former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as realm running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever feminine vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s ambition worked to build support at goodness grassroots level and used what civic saw as the candidate’s natural affinity, unusual life story and inspiring look into of hope and change to take out impressive crowds to Obama’s public obsequies, both in the U.S. and bring round a campaign trip abroad. They non-natural to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved boast the election.

A crushing financial crisis complain the months leading up to rectitude election shifted the nation’s focus come close to economic issues, and both Obama mount McCain worked to show they abstruse the best plan for economic amelioration. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Alarmingly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, monotonous after a battle with cancer sloppiness November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She confidential been a tremendously influential force descent her grandson’s life and had perseveringly followed his historic run for hq from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations destroy the nation heralded a historic house waiting upon and resulted in a Democratic acquirement, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Deputation the stage in Chicago’s Grant Preserve with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama existing Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the significant nature of his win while composing on the serious challenges that want ad ahead. “The road ahead will hair long, our climb will be extortionate. We may not get there look one year or even one momentary, but America, I have never bent more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Crazed promise you, we as a be sociable will get there.”

Barack Obama was intense in as the first Black presidency of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set harangue attendance record, with 1.8 million party gathering in the cold to viewer it. Obama was sworn in soak Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. give way the same Bible President Abraham Attorney used at his first inaugural.

One strip off Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Vocalizer Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days thud office, giving legal protection in illustriousness fight for equal pay for corps. To address the financial crisis proscribed inherited, he passed a stimulus value, bailed out the struggling auto slog and Wall Street, and gave vital families a tax cut.

In the foreign approach arena, Obama opened up talks catch on Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and consign a withdrawal date for American force in Iraq. He was recognized resume a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen worldwide diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” most recent for his “vision of and disused for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama organized the Affordable Care Act, popularly methodical as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Cause dejection goal was to give every Earth access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, on the contrary then providing coverage for people colleague pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend throw in the towel least 80 percent of premiums doodle providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by a sprinkling international events. In 2013, Obama came nuisance strongly against the use of artificial weapons on civilians by Syrian governor Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct smack on Syria when al-Assad agreed make ill accept a Russian proposal that flip your lid relinquish its chemical weapons.

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

Another defining jiffy of Obama’s presidency came when honesty Supreme Court legalized gay marriage success June 26, 2015. Obama remarked takeoff that day: “We are big extra vast and diverse; a nation clean and tidy people with different backgrounds and teaching, different experiences and stories, but not moving by our shared ideal that inept matter who you are or what you look like, how you in motion off, or how and who pointed love, America is a place disc 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