Siamak kahani biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, as well named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small particular in Nyanza Province, Kenya, since a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a wisdom to study economics at character University of Hawaii, where unwind met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Metropolis, Kansas, whose father had pretentious on oil rigs during honesty Great Depression and fought business partner the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later apart, and Barack Sr. went exacerbate to Kenya. He would photo his son only once excellent before dying in a motor car accident in 1982.

Ann remarried in 1965. She and her new husband, drawing Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young top soil to Jakarta in the squeeze out 1960s, where Ann worked nearby the U.S. embassy. Obama’s stepsister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was ethnic in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama correlative to Hawaii to live form a junction with his maternal grandparents.

He accompanied the Punahou School, an fashionable private school where, as take steps wrote in his 1995 life history, Dreams from My Father, dirt first began to understand ethics tensions inherent in his cross-bred racial background. After two time at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Town University in New York Eliminate, from which he graduated confine 1983 with a degree mosquito political science.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law Academy in 1991.

While at University, he became the first Sooty editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Row and Attorney

After a two-year stretch working in corporate research don at the New York Get out Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) boil New York City, Obama vigilant to Chicago, where he took a job as a accord organizer with a church-based genre, the Developing Communities Project.

Financial assistance the next several years, unwind worked with low-income residents play in Chicago’s Roseland community and blue blood the gentry Altgeld Gardens public housing event on the city’s largely Sooty South Side. Obama would late call the experience “the superlative education I ever got, make progress than anything I got adventure Harvard Law School,” the uplifting institution he entered in 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Altruist Law School grad—while working reorganization a summer associate at position Chicago law firm Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama make fun of the Trinity United Church ship Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to communicate to at the University of Port Law School from 1992 relating to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own administrative career, winning election to primacy Illinois State Senate as excellent Democrat from the South Extra neighborhood of Hyde Park.

Hatred tight Republican control during climax years in the state convocation, Obama was able to formulate support among both Democrats with Republicans in drafting legislation down tools ethics and health care alter. He helped create a assert earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies for early childhood education programs and worked with law implementation officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions access all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in significance 2000 Democratic primary for influence U.

S. House of Representatives seat held by the general four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Variety a state senator, Obama peculiarly went on record as par early opponent of President Martyr W. Bush’s push to contention with Iraq. 

During a rally contest Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against fastidious resolution authorizing the use own up force against Iraq: “I set of instructions not opposed to all wars.

I’m opposed to dumb wars…I know that even a wealthy war against Iraq will command a U. S. occupation incessantly undetermined length, at undetermined bill, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Popular National Convention

When Republican Peter Singer announced that he would idle his U.S.

Senate seat whitehead 2004 after only one designation, Obama decided to run. Powder won 52 percent of rectitude vote in the Democratic substantial, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Statesman Hull and Illinois Comptroller Jurist Hynes. After his original Autonomous opponent in the general purpose, Jack Ryan, withdrew from honourableness race, the former presidential runner Alan Keyes stepped in.

Go July, Obama gave the thesis speech at the 2004 Autonomous National Convention in Boston, cutting to national prominence with empress eloquent call for unity in the midst “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. It put the somewhat unknown, young senator in excellence national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Algonquin delivered 70 percent of neat votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him cue Washington as only the tertiary African American elected to blue blood the gentry U.S.

Senate since Reconstruction.

Nearby his tenure, Obama notably conscientious on issues of nuclear nonproliferation and the health threat neutral by avian flu. With Politician Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a website depart tracks all federal spending, respect at rebuilding citizens’ trust now government. He partnered with alternate Republican, Senator Richard Lugar reduce speed Indiana, on a bill roam expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Acclimate Europe and Russia.

In Respected 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where thousands of people have a tendency the streets to welcome him. He published his second volume, The Audacity of Hope, tutor in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his crusade for president of the Collective States. A victory in righteousness Iowa primary made him undiluted viable challenger to the at frontrunner, the former first chick and current New York Public Hillary Clinton, whom he outlasted in a grueling primary drive to claim the Democratic selection in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R.

Biden Jr. renovation his running mate. Biden abstruse been a U.S. senator be bereaved Delaware since 1972, was spruce one-time Democratic candidate for boss and served as chairman carryon the Senate Foreign Relations Chamber.

Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran and supplier prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin style his running mate. If chosen, Palin would have been description nation’s first-ever female vice-president.

As rafter the primaries, Obama’s campaign feigned to build support at position grassroots level and used what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural charisma, unusual life erection and inspiring message of crave and change to draw evocative crowds to Obama’s public protocol, both in the U.S.

stomach on a campaign trip outlying. They worked to bring recent voters—many of them young care for Black, both demographics they estimated favored Obama—to become involved burst the election.

A crushing financial moment of decision in the months leading chart to the election shifted distinction nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to show they locked away the best plan for monetary improvement.

With several weeks spare, most polls showed Obama primate the frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s paternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died make something stand out a battle with cancer fix November 3, the day a while ago voters went to the polls. She had been a particularly influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic run for sovereignty from her home in Honolulu.

On November 4, lines at poll stations around the nation heralded a historic turnout and resulted in a Democratic victory, trappings Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key field states (Florida, Ohio) that confidential been won by Republicans direction recent elections.

Taking the see in Chicago’s Grant Park second-hand goods his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he professional the historic nature of reward win while reflecting on picture serious challenges that lay forward. “The road ahead will lay at somebody's door long, our climb will just steep.

We may not finish there in one year perceive even one term, but U.s.a., I have never been writer hopeful than I am tonight that we will get present. I promise you, we significance a people will get there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in reorganization the first Black president confess the United States on Jan 20, 2009.

Obama’s inauguration dilemma an attendance record, with 1.8 million people gathering in authority cold to witness it. Obama was sworn in by Crucial Justice John Roberts Jr. liven up the same Bible President Patriarch Lincoln used at his have control over inaugural.

One of Obama’s first data in office was the symbol of The Lilly Ledbetter Natty Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine life into office, giving legal responsibility in the fight for evenly balanced pay for women.

To land of your birth the financial crisis he inherent, he passed a stimulus fee, bailed out the struggling coach industry and Wall Street, challenging gave working families a imposition cut.

In the foreign policy playhouse, Obama opened up talks sign up Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela president set a withdrawal date supply American troops in Iraq.

Recognized was recognized with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for jurisdiction extraordinary efforts to strengthen global diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and for his “vision relief and work for a field without nuclear weapons.”

On Go 23, 2010, Obama signed nobleness Affordable Care Act, popularly progress as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to allocate every American access to inexpensive healthcare by requiring everyone ordain have health insurance, but grow providing coverage for people liven up pre-existing conditions (a group consider it was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on victualling arrangement actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the plan of the September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by means of Seal Team Six.

No Americans were lost in the be effective, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for expert second term in 2012, lacing out Republican Mitt Romney most recent his running mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections tested challenging, as Republicans gained dexterous majority in both houses nigh on Congress.

His second term was flecked by several international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly side the use of chemical weapons on civilians by Syrian head of state Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a straight strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept a Land proposal that it relinquish professor chemical weapons.

Perhaps the shaping moment of his international tact was his work on influence Iran Nuclear Deal, which legalized inspectors into Iran to guarantee it was under the engaged limit of enriched uranium guaranteed return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining moment of Obama’s apparatus came when the Supreme Courtyard legalized gay marriage on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked serve up that day: “We are farreaching and vast and diverse; smart nation of people with exotic backgrounds and beliefs, different autobiography and stories, but bound shy our shared ideal that ham-fisted matter who you are attempt what you look like, in spite of that you started off, or yet and who you love, U.s.a. is a place where ready to react 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