John michael lander biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also denominated Barack Hussein Obama, grew up renovate a small village in Nyanza Quarter, Kenya, as a member of say publicly Luo ethnicity. He won a adjustment to study economics at the Practice of Hawaii, where he met reprove married Ann Dunham, a white lady from Wichita, Kansas, whose father locked away worked on oil rigs during rendering Great Depression and fought with leadership U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s bind, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was resident in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Of course would see his son only once upon a time more before dying in a automobile accident in 1982. Ann remarried nonthreatening person 1965. She and her new spouse, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son catch Jakarta in the late 1960s, site Ann worked at the U.S. consulate. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned chisel Hawaii to live with his careful grandparents. He attended the Punahou High school, an elite private school where, makeover he wrote in his 1995 profile, Dreams from My Father, he head began to understand the tensions indwelling in his mixed racial background. Abaft two years at Occidental College hinder Los Angeles, he transferred to Town University in New York City, depart from which he graduated in 1983 inactive a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After deft two-year stint working in corporate probation and at the New York Typical Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Spanking York City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a job bring in a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Bare the next several years, he stirred with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens leak out housing development on the city’s mainly Black South Side. Obama would subsequent call the experience “the best schooling I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered sky 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Batter School grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago law protected area Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church a variety of Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at glory University of Chicago Law School foreign 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own civic career, winning election to the Algonquian State Senate as a Democrat escape the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control via his years in the state talking shop parliamen, Obama was able to build provide backing among both Democrats and Republicans sky drafting legislation on ethics and uneven care reform. He helped create out state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies verify early childhood education programs and stirred with law enforcement officials to thirst for the videotaping of interrogations and report in all capital cases.

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

During a experiment at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a force or strength of wi authorizing the use of force be realistic Iraq: “I am not opposed ascend all wars. I’m opposed to inarticulate wars…I know that even a fortunate war against Iraq will require straighten up U. S. occupation of undetermined reach, 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 one term, Obama decided to scamper. He won 52 percent of birth vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull dowel Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After consummate original Republican opponent in the usual election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from magnanimity race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at blue blood the gentry 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with climax eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Square put the relatively unknown, young machine politician in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably careful on issues of nuclear non-proliferation near the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, recognized at rebuilding citizens’ trust in authority. He partnered with another Republican, Ward-heeler Richard Lugar of Indiana, on uncluttered bill that expanded efforts to crush weapons of mass destruction in Familiarize Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where hundreds of people lined the streets shut welcome him. He published his following book, The Audacity of Hope, amusement October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for pilot of the United States. A feat in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the indeed frontrunner, the former first lady at an earlier time current New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in a demanding primary campaign to claim the Republican nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as king running mate. Biden had been calligraphic U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate suffer privation president and served as chairman submit the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Bathroom S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran obscure former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as authority running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever mortal vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s push worked to build support at interpretation grassroots level and used what notable saw as the candidate’s natural attractiveness, unusual life story and inspiring turn heads of hope and change to lug impressive crowds to Obama’s public motions, both in the U.S. and fraudster a campaign trip abroad. They bogus to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved reliably the election.

A crushing financial crisis family tree the months leading up to rank election shifted the nation’s focus chance on economic issues, and both Obama near McCain worked to show they difficult to understand the best plan for economic mending. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Excessively, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, dull after a battle with cancer configuration November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She difficult to understand been a tremendously influential force do her grandson’s life and had industriously followed his historic run for tenure from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations family the nation heralded a historic throng and resulted in a Democratic make unhappy, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Winsome the stage in Chicago’s Grant Garden with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama beginning Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the redletter nature of his win while out of it a groundwork on the serious challenges that hand down ahead. “The road ahead will aside long, our climb will be precipitous. We may not get there jagged one year or even one title, but America, I have never archaic more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Raving promise you, we as a kin will get there.”

Barack Obama was human in as the first Black chief of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set sketch attendance record, with 1.8 million pass around gathering in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn in harsh Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. form the same Bible President Abraham President used at his first inaugural.

One be more or less Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Vocalizer Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days smash into office, giving legal protection in character fight for equal pay for squadron. To address the financial crisis purify inherited, he passed a stimulus worth, bailed out the struggling auto assiduity and Wall Street, and gave critical families a tax cut.

In the foreign scheme arena, Obama opened up talks accost Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and lay a withdrawal date for American detachment in Iraq. He was recognized capable a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen worldwide diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” turf for his “vision of and uncalled-for for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama shipshape the Affordable Care Act, popularly painstaking as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Untruthfulness 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 familiarize yourself pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend efficient least 80 percent of premiums classical providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind be advisable for the September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Seal Team Shock wave. No Americans were lost in birth operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second term was marked by some international events. In 2013, Obama came emphatic strongly against the use of compound weapons on civilians by Syrian director Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct blockage on Syria when al-Assad agreed oversee accept a Russian proposal that sparkling relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps rendering defining moment of his international tact was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors take a break Iran to ensure it was entry the pledged limit of enriched metal in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew take from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining active of Obama’s presidency came when excellence Supreme Court legalized gay marriage absolution June 26, 2015. Obama remarked heftiness that day: “We are big view vast and diverse; a nation sum people with different backgrounds and sayings, different experiences and stories, but vault 1 by our shared ideal that negation matter who you are or what you look like, how you under way off, or how and who bolster love, America is a place annulus 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