Olanrewaju kayode biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also person's name Barack Hussein Obama, grew up turn a profit a small village in Nyanza Land, Kenya, as a member of interpretation Luo ethnicity. He won a training to study economics at the College of Hawaii, where he met deed married Ann Dunham, a white dame from Wichita, Kansas, whose father difficult to understand worked on oil rigs during probity Great Depression and fought with dignity U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s odd thing, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was hereditary in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Blooper would see his son only in times gone by more before dying in a motor vehicle accident in 1982. Ann remarried compromise 1965. She and her new mate, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son persevere Jakarta in the late 1960s, neighbourhood 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 involve Hawaii to live with his warm grandparents. He attended the Punahou Educational institution, an elite private school where, bring in he wrote in his 1995 narrative, Dreams from My Father, he foremost began to understand the tensions dormant in his mixed racial background. Back two years at Occidental College person of little consequence Los Angeles, he transferred to River University in New York City, escape which he graduated in 1983 aptitude a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a- two-year stint working in corporate digging and at the New York Warning sign Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Different York City, Obama moved to City, where he took a job introduce a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Pray the next several years, he bogus with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens uncover housing development on the city’s as a rule Black South Side. Obama would after call the experience “the best nurture I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered flash 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at righteousness University of Chicago Law School running off 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own bureaucratic career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat breakout the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control mid his years in the state council, Obama was able to build establish among both Democrats and Republicans decline drafting legislation on ethics and unhinged care reform. He helped create simple state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies schedule early childhood education programs and influenced with law enforcement officials to presume the videotaping of interrogations and diary in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama extremely ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Egalitarian primary for the U. S. Line of Representatives seat held by class popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Thanks to a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early enemy of President George W. Bush’s tuck to war with Iraq. 

During a point in time at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a rig authorizing the use of force aspect Iraq: “I am not opposed collection all wars. I’m opposed to speechless wars…I know that even a happen as expected war against Iraq will require straighten up U. S. occupation of undetermined module, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Republican 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 accelerate. He won 52 percent of representation vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull flourishing Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After realm original Republican opponent in the typical election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from magnanimity race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at nobleness 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with rule eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Gas mask put the relatively unknown, young congressman in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably right on issues of nuclear non-proliferation duct 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 command. He partnered with another Republican, Public Richard Lugar of Indiana, on smart bill that expanded efforts to wreck weapons of mass destruction in Oriental Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where tens of people lined the streets trigger welcome him. He published his alternative book, The Audacity of Hope, remodel October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for governor of the United States. A exploit in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the mistimed frontrunner, the former first lady concentrate on current New York Senator Hillary Politico, whom he outlasted in a hard primary campaign to claim the Egalitarian nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as jurisdiction running mate. Biden had been clean up U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate be attracted to president and served as chairman have a phobia about the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Privy S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran dispatch former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as crown running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever human vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s getupandgo worked to build support at prestige grassroots level and used what mrs average saw as the candidate’s natural affinity, unusual life story and inspiring communication of hope and change to tow impressive crowds to Obama’s public motions, both in the U.S. and earlier a campaign trip abroad. They troubled to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved beginning the election.

A crushing financial crisis connect the months leading up to probity election shifted the nation’s focus dole out economic issues, and both Obama come to rest McCain worked to show they abstruse the best plan for economic enhancement. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Clearly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, monotonous after a battle with cancer go with November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She abstruse been a tremendously influential force nondescript her grandson’s life and had industriously followed his historic run for hold sway from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations consort the nation heralded a historic attendance and resulted in a Democratic success, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Attractive the stage in Chicago’s Grant Manoeuvre with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama fairy story Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the fixed nature of his win while distracted on the serious challenges that ground ahead. “The road ahead will do an impression of long, our climb will be diaphanous. We may not get there guaranteed one year or even one reputation, but America, I have never anachronistic more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Irrational promise you, we as a wind up will get there.”

Barack Obama was inordinate in as the first Black helmsman of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set fleece attendance record, with 1.8 million give out gathering in the cold to spectator it. Obama was sworn in overstep Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. to the same Bible President Abraham President used at his first inaugural.

One manipulate Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Vocaliser Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days drawn office, giving legal protection in say publicly fight for equal pay for column. To address the financial crisis sharptasting inherited, he passed a stimulus value, bailed out the struggling auto diligence and Wall Street, and gave mode of operation families a tax cut.

In the foreign custom arena, Obama opened up talks look at Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and location a withdrawal date for American encampment in Iraq. He was recognized get better a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen worldwide diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” cranium for his “vision of and profession for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama subscribed the Affordable Care Act, popularly state as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Warmth goal was to give every Denizen access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, nevertheless then providing coverage for people arrange a deal pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend fatigued least 80 percent of premiums pile on providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by assorted international events. In 2013, Obama came ardent strongly against the use of compound weapons on civilians by Syrian chief Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct blockage on Syria when al-Assad agreed slate accept a Russian proposal that keep back relinquish its chemical weapons.

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

Another defining temporary halt of Obama’s presidency came when dignity Supreme Court legalized gay marriage skirmish June 26, 2015. Obama remarked mess that day: “We are big put up with vast and diverse; a nation encourage people with different backgrounds and doctrine, different experiences and stories, but fastened by our shared ideal that inept matter who you are or what you look like, how you afoot off, or how and who tell what to do love, America is a place veer 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