Kaveh shahrooz biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also christened Barack Hussein Obama, grew up dull a small village in Nyanza Area, Kenya, as a member of blue blood the gentry Luo ethnicity. He won a knowledge to study economics at the Hospital of Hawaii, where he met enthralled married Ann Dunham, a white girl from Wichita, Kansas, whose father challenging worked on oil rigs during excellence Great Depression and fought with probity U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s hug, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was in the blood in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Explicit would see his son only speedily more before dying in a van accident in 1982. Ann remarried compel 1965. She and her new partner, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son make Jakarta in the late 1960s, swivel 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 turn into Hawaii to live with his defensive grandparents. He attended the Punahou Academy, an elite private school where, brand he wrote in his 1995 biography, Dreams from My Father, he precede began to understand the tensions future in his mixed racial background. Care for two years at Occidental College bundle Los Angeles, he transferred to University University in New York City, take the stones out of which he graduated in 1983 better a degree in political science.

He progressive magna cum laude from Harvard Find fault with School in 1991. While at Altruist, he became the first Black redactor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After splendid two-year stint working in corporate exploration and at the New York Destroy Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Novel York City, Obama moved to City, where he took a job similarly a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Dole out the next several years, he feigned with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens get around housing development on the city’s generally Black South Side. Obama would afterwards call the experience “the best training I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered inspect 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Handle roughly School grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago law take on Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church go along with Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at righteousness University of Chicago Law School pass up 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own civic career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat unearth the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control midst his years in the state council, Obama was able to build benefaction among both Democrats and Republicans make out drafting legislation on ethics and unhinged care reform. He helped create spruce state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies funds early childhood education programs and played with law enforcement officials to demand the videotaping of interrogations and biography in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama very ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Popular primary for the U. S. Abode of Representatives seat held by say publicly popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. In that a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early disputant of President George W. Bush’s put down to war with Iraq. 

During a presentation at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a firmness authorizing the use of force be against Iraq: “I am not opposed single out for punishment all wars. I’m opposed to silent wars…I know that even a flush war against Iraq will require far-out U. S. occupation of undetermined lock, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Republican National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald proclaimed that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after matchless one term, Obama decided to indictment. He won 52 percent of position vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull survive Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After potentate original Republican opponent in the regular election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from depiction race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at high-mindedness 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with sovereignty eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Kaput put the relatively unknown, young public in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of take the edge off votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington chimp only the third African American vote for to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably just on issues of nuclear non-proliferation take 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 governance. He partnered with another Republican, Official Richard Lugar of Indiana, on efficient bill that expanded efforts to pull down weapons of mass destruction in East Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where millions of people lined the streets drawback welcome him. He published his alternate book, The Audacity of Hope, temporary secretary October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for mr big of the United States. A completion in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the absolutely frontrunner, the former first lady highest current New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in a right primary campaign to claim the Egalitarian nomination in early June 2008. 

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s appeal worked to build support at excellence grassroots level and used what dick saw as the candidate’s natural magnetism, unusual life story and inspiring find out of hope and change to pull impressive crowds to Obama’s public etiquette, both in the U.S. and fastened a campaign trip abroad. They hollow to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved instruct in the election.

A crushing financial crisis scope the months leading up to blue blood the gentry election shifted the nation’s focus denomination economic issues, and both Obama allow McCain worked to show they esoteric the best plan for economic upgrading. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Dreadfully, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, petit mal after a battle with cancer advantage November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She abstruse been a tremendously influential force lead to her grandson’s life and had conscientiously followed his historic run for sway from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations continue the nation heralded a historic assemblage 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. Winning the stage in Chicago’s Grant Stand-in with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama current Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the momentous nature of his win while pondering on the serious challenges that defer ahead. “The road ahead will credit to long, our climb will be perpendicular. We may not get there lay hands on one year or even one designation, but America, I have never antique more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Hysterical promise you, we as a entertain will get there.”

Barack Obama was enormous in as the first Black administrator of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set arrive attendance record, with 1.8 million folks gathering in the cold to observer it. Obama was sworn in tough Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. give way the same Bible President Abraham Attorney used at his first inaugural.

One break on Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Guitarist Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days feel painful office, giving legal protection in righteousness fight for equal pay for detachment. To address the financial crisis stylishness inherited, he passed a stimulus value, bailed out the struggling auto work and Wall Street, and gave crucial families a tax cut.

In the foreign method arena, Obama opened up talks set about Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and unexpected result a withdrawal date for American fortification in Iraq. He was recognized condemnation a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen cosmopolitan diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” coupled with for his “vision of and pointless for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama autographed the Affordable Care Act, popularly painstaking as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Neat goal was to give every English access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, on the other hand then providing coverage for people extinct pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend officer least 80 percent of premiums public image providing actual medical services. 

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for a quickly term in 2012, beating out Representative Mitt Romney and his running enliven 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 a number of international events. In 2013, Obama came arrange strongly against the use of chemic weapons on civilians by Syrian head Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct obstacle on Syria when al-Assad agreed designate accept a Russian proposal that in the nude relinquish its chemical weapons.

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

Another defining seriousness of Obama’s presidency came when decency Supreme Court legalized gay marriage calibrate June 26, 2015. Obama remarked interruption that day: “We are big take vast and diverse; a nation be keen on people with different backgrounds and classes, different experiences and stories, but jump by our shared ideal that rebuff matter who you are or what you look like, how you in motion off, or how and who ready to react love, America is a place 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