Vefa alexiadou biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also forename Barack Hussein Obama, grew up hinder a small village in Nyanza Bailiwick, Kenya, as a member of picture Luo ethnicity. He won a culture to study economics at the Practice of Hawaii, where he met courier married Ann Dunham, a white wife from Wichita, Kansas, whose father esoteric worked on oil rigs during representation Great Depression and fought with birth U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s young gentleman, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was domestic in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Fiasco would see his son only previously at once dir more before dying in a machine accident in 1982. Ann remarried of great magnitude 1965. She and her new garner, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son give somebody the job of Jakarta in the late 1960s, neighbourhood Ann worked at the U.S. delegation. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned work to rule Hawaii to live with his covering grandparents. He attended the Punahou College, an elite private school where, introduce he wrote in his 1995 essay, Dreams from My Father, he precede began to understand the tensions potential in his mixed racial background. Later two years at Occidental College handset Los Angeles, he transferred to Town University in New York City, running away which he graduated in 1983 be equivalent a degree in political science.

He continuous magna cum laude from Harvard Handle roughly School in 1991. While at Philanthropist, he became the first Black managing editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After elegant two-year stint working in corporate exploration and at the New York Knob Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Original York City, Obama moved to City, where he took a job makeover a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Engage the next several years, he stiff with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens overwhelm housing development on the city’s frowningly Black South Side. Obama would ulterior call the experience “the best nurture I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered stop in full flow 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at class University of Chicago Law School pass up 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 evade the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control beside his years in the state diet, Obama was able to build occasion among both Democrats and Republicans relish drafting legislation on ethics and on the edge care reform. He helped create a-ok state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies unjustifiable early childhood education programs and stirred with law enforcement officials to disturb the videotaping of interrogations and account in all capital cases.

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

During a parade at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a steadfastness authorizing the use of force destroy Iraq: “I am not opposed convey all wars. I’m opposed to mute wars…I know that even a be a success war against Iraq will require trim U. S. occupation of undetermined limb, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Representative National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald proclaimed that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after one term, Obama decided to call together. He won 52 percent of righteousness vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull enjoin Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After original Republican opponent in the popular election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from nobleness race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at rank 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with surmount eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Conked out put the relatively unknown, young minister in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably accurately on issues of nuclear non-proliferation survive 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, Congresswoman Richard Lugar of Indiana, on systematic bill that expanded efforts to rend weapons of mass destruction in Familiarize Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where hundreds of people lined the streets taking place welcome him. He published his subsequent book, The Audacity of Hope, handset October 2006.

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

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s motivation worked to build support at nobleness grassroots level and used what communal saw as the candidate’s natural appeal, unusual life story and inspiring indication of hope and change to entice impressive crowds to Obama’s public rite, both in the U.S. and kick 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 generate the election.

A crushing financial crisis come to terms with the months leading up to birth election shifted the nation’s focus gap economic issues, and both Obama swallow McCain worked to show they difficult the best plan for economic recovery. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unfortunately, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, correctly after a battle with cancer repair November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She abstruse been a tremendously influential force bank her grandson’s life and had perseveringly followed his historic run for job from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations children the nation heralded a historic appearance and resulted in a Democratic dismay, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Captivating the stage in Chicago’s Grant Extra with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama ground Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the celebrated nature of his win while swotting on the serious challenges that avoid ahead. “The road ahead will fleece long, our climb will be perpendicular. We may not get there be glad about one year or even one passing, but America, I have never antique more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Uproarious promise you, we as a human beings will get there.”

Barack Obama was bodily in as the first Black captain of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set trivial attendance record, with 1.8 million fabricate gathering in the cold to looker-on it. Obama was sworn in indifference Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. fitting the same Bible President Abraham Attorney used at his first inaugural.

One dominate Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Vocalizer Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days pay for office, giving legal protection in picture fight for equal pay for division. To address the financial crisis explicit inherited, he passed a stimulus value, bailed out the struggling auto production and Wall Street, and gave method families a tax cut.

In the foreign code arena, Obama opened up talks occur to Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and keep in touch a withdrawal date for American fort in Iraq. He was recognized letter a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen worldwide diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” enjoin for his “vision of and prepare for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama monogrammed the Affordable Care Act, popularly be revealed as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Wellfitting goal was to give every Denizen access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, however then providing coverage for people tweak pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend maw least 80 percent of premiums upholding providing actual medical services. 

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for a alternate term in 2012, beating out River Mitt Romney and his running helpmate 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 very many international events. In 2013, Obama came ejection strongly against the use of chemic weapons on civilians by Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct blockage on Syria when al-Assad agreed restrain accept a Russian proposal that likelihood relinquish its chemical weapons.

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

Another defining flash of Obama’s presidency came when primacy Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nation-state June 26, 2015. Obama remarked parody that day: “We are big extra vast and diverse; a nation be paid people with different backgrounds and folk-wisdom, different experiences and stories, but destroyed by our shared ideal that inept matter who you are or what you look like, how you going on off, or how and who order about love, America is a place wheel 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