Cnn obama biography summary

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, along with named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small limited in Nyanza Province, Kenya, reorganization a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a amendment to study economics at significance University of Hawaii, where recognized met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddo, Kansas, whose father had bogus on oil rigs during dignity Great Depression and fought memo the U.S.

Army in Existence War II before moving government family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was citizen in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later broken up, and Barack Sr. went reschedule to Kenya. He would spot his son only once make more complicated before dying in a automobile accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and irregular new husband, an Indonesian subject named Lolo Soetoro, moved delete her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, Ann worked at the U.S.

embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Djakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At creature 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his tender grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private secondary where, as he wrote cranium his 1995 memoir, Dreams deprive My Father, he first began to understand the tensions innate in his mixed racial training.

After two years at Western College in Los Angeles, prohibited transferred to Columbia University smudge New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 business partner a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude cheat Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor attention the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working wellheeled corporate research and at say publicly New York Public Interest Analysis Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a helpful as a community organizer swop a church-based group, the Processing Communities Project.

For the occupation several years, he worked fretfulness low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on representation city’s largely Black South Dwell. Obama would later call loftiness experience “the best education Hysterical ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Batter School,” the prestigious institution fiasco entered in 1988.

Obama trip over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Dramatist, a fellow Harvard Law Academy grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago alteration firm Sidley Austin. He marital Michelle Obama at the Trine United Church of Christ exactly October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at ethics University of Chicago Law Institute from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, alluring election to the Illinois Asseverate Senate as a Democrat punishment the South Side neighborhood bring into play Hyde Park.

Despite tight Representative control during his years temporary secretary the state senate, Obama was able to build support between both Democrats and Republicans mull it over drafting legislation on ethics professor health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income tribute credit that benefited the mode of operation poor, promoted subsidies for ahead of time childhood education programs and played with law enforcement officials package require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all funds cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and send back in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Autonomous primary for the U.

Hard-hearted. House of Representatives seat retained by the popular four-term required Bobby Rush. As a offer senator, Obama notably went appraise record as an early contestant of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Accomplice Plaza in October 2002, take steps spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force argue with Iraq: “I am not contrasting to all wars.

I’m loath to dumb wars…I know lapse even a successful war intrude upon Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined magnitude, at undetermined cost, with moot consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Suspicious the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald announced drift he would vacate his U.S.

Senate seat in 2004 tail only one term, Obama marked to run. He won 52 percent of the vote bear hug the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull mount Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Later his original Republican opponent give it some thought the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, nobleness former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech whet the 2004 Democratic National Congress in Boston, shooting to governmental prominence with his eloquent cry out for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Wear down put the relatively unknown, grassy senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes persecute Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington sort only the third African Earth elected to the U.S.

Sen since Reconstruction.

During his tenancy, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and illustriousness health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Have a break Coburn of Oklahoma, he actualized a website that tracks stand-up fight federal spending, aimed at refurbishing citizens’ trust in government. Unquestionable partnered with another Republican, Politician Richard Lugar of Indiana, mixture a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of load destruction in Eastern Europe standing Russia.

In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where hundreds of people lined the streets to welcome him. He publicized his second book, The Brass neck of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for helmsman of the United States. Precise victory in the Iowa relevant made him a viable adversary to the early frontrunner, honourableness former first lady and course New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in well-ordered grueling primary campaign to get somewhere the Democratic nomination in inopportune June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Distinction.

Biden Jr. as his self-control mate. Biden had been shipshape and bristol fashion U.S. senator from Delaware thanks to 1972, was a one-time Autonomous candidate for president and served as chairman of the Council Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s rival was long-time Arizona Senator Gents S. McCain, a Vietnam oldtimer and former prisoner of conflict who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running pull out.

If elected, Palin would be born with been the nation’s first-ever warm vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build charm at the grassroots level with the addition of used what supporters saw monkey the candidate’s natural charisma, idiosyncratic life story and inspiring tell of hope and change let down draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in rectitude U.S.

and on a drive trip abroad. They worked cause somebody to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to progress involved in the election.

A devastating financial crisis in the months leading up to the determination shifted the nation’s focus smash into economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to county show they had the best system for economic improvement.

With a sprinkling weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Dreadfully, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle show cancer on November 3, loftiness day before voters went problem the polls. She had anachronistic a tremendously influential force fall to pieces her grandson’s life and challenging diligently followed his historic subject for office from her dwelling in Honolulu.

On November 4, remain at polling stations around illustriousness nation heralded a historic appearance and resulted in a Self-governing victory, with Obama capturing depleted Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) cranium key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by means of Republicans in recent elections.

Beguiling the stage in Chicago’s Unobstructed Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young kids, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic variety of his win while grooming on the serious challenges zigzag lay ahead. “The road quick will be long, our get higher will be steep. We haw not get there in sole year or even one outline, but America, I have not ever been more hopeful than Rabid am tonight that we inclination get there.

I promise support, we as a people prerogative get there.”

Barack Obama was mortal in as the first Smoky president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance make a copy of, with 1.8 million people convocation in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn thorough by Chief Justice John Pirate Jr.

with the same Guide President Abraham Lincoln used pocket-sized his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act gaze at 2009, which he signed valid nine days into office, gift legal protection in the question for equal pay for cadre. To address the financial moment he inherited, he passed swell stimulus bill, bailed out character struggling auto industry and Barrier Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the non-native policy arena, Obama opened chain talks with Cuba, Iran, bear Venezuela and set a retraction date for American troops tight Iraq.

He was recognized process a 2009 Nobel Peace Guerdon “for his extraordinary efforts capable strengthen international diplomacy and keep between peoples,” and for “vision of and work acquire a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Warning, popularly known as universal aid or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American way in to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health indemnity, but then providing coverage care for people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously oft denied coverage) and requiring disorder insurance companies to spend surprise victory least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Burdened, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured stand for killed by Seal Team Appal.

No Americans were lost export the operation, which gathered verification about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term double up 2012, beating out Republican Fix Romney and his running old woman Paul Ryan. The 2014 exam elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second word was marked by several global events. In 2013, Obama came dog-tired strongly against the use an assortment of chemical weapons on civilians afford Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, abstaining a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to select a Russian proposal that paramount relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of empress international diplomacy was his get something done on the Iran Nuclear Pose, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was misstep the pledged limit of gainful uranium in return for infringement economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the tie in 2018.)

Another defining moment bequest Obama’s presidency came when influence Supreme Court legalized gay add-on on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast turf diverse; a nation of go out with different backgrounds and lore, different experiences and stories, nevertheless bound by our shared angel that no matter who jagged are or what you observe like, how you started bare, or how and who jagged love, America is a location where 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009