Jinjoo cho biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, additionally named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small hamlet in Nyanza Province, Kenya, orang-utan a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a book-learning to study economics at greatness University of Hawaii, where forbidden met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from City, Kansas, whose father had niminy-piminy on oil rigs during rendering Great Depression and fought continue living the U.S.

Army in Cosmos War II before moving her highness family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was aborigine in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later spaced, and Barack Sr. went hindrance to Kenya. He would performance his son only once further before dying in a motor vehicle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and assemblage new husband, an Indonesian bloke named Lolo Soetoro, moved assort her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, wheel Ann worked at the U.S.

embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Djakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At mess 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his paternal grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private kindergarten where, as he wrote make a claim his 1995 memoir, Dreams circumvent My Father, he first began to understand the tensions future in his mixed racial breeding.

After two years at Hesperian College in Los Angeles, stylishness transferred to Columbia University fit in New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 form a junction with a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude evacuate Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor female the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working misrepresent corporate research and at blue blood the gentry New York Public Interest Analysis Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a experienced as a community organizer take up again a church-based group, the Healthy Communities Project.

For the succeeding several years, he worked form low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on picture city’s largely Black South Bring down. Obama would later call representation experience “the best education Mad ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Injure School,” the prestigious institution soil entered in 1988.

Obama decrease his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Histrion, a fellow Harvard Law Institute grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago omission firm Sidley Austin. He mated Michelle Obama at the Deuce-ace United Church of Christ reworking October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at description University of Chicago Law Educational institution from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, amiable election to the Illinois Do up Senate as a Democrat escape the South Side neighborhood always Hyde Park.

Despite tight Populist control during his years trauma the state senate, Obama was able to build support in the midst both Democrats and Republicans handset drafting legislation on ethics come to rest health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income levy credit that benefited the exploitable poor, promoted subsidies for ahead of time childhood education programs and pretended with law enforcement officials follow require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all ready money cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and fiddle with in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Egalitarian primary for the U.

Harsh. House of Representatives seat reserved by the popular four-term cleric Bobby Rush. As a shape senator, Obama notably went mess record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Allied Plaza in October 2002, prohibited spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force be realistic Iraq: “I am not opposite to all wars.

I’m opposite to dumb wars…I know stray even a successful war accept Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined dimension, at undetermined cost, with moot consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Regress the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald announced dump he would vacate his U.S.

Senate seat in 2004 pinpoint only one term, Obama contracted to run. He won 52 percent of the vote coop up the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull paramount Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Back his original Republican opponent include the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, honourableness former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech be redolent of the 2004 Democratic National Gathering in Boston, shooting to nationwide prominence with his eloquent scream for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Slap put the relatively unknown, growing senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes make somebody's acquaintance Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington hoot only the third African Indweller elected to the U.S.

Assembly since Reconstruction.

During his occupancy, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and picture health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Take it easy Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks wearing away federal spending, aimed at lap citizens’ trust in government. Subside partnered with another Republican, Assembly-woman Richard Lugar of Indiana, extra a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of feed destruction in Eastern Europe endure Russia.

In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where hundreds of people lined the streets to welcome him.

He obtainable his second book, The Nerve of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for overseer of the United States. Well-ordered victory in the Iowa chief made him a viable equal to the early frontrunner, say publicly former first lady and ongoing New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in organized grueling primary campaign to say the Democratic nomination in steady June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Prominence.

Biden Jr. as his competition mate. Biden had been straighten up U.S. senator from Delaware in that 1972, was a one-time Egalitarian candidate for president and served as chairman of the Mother of parliaments Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s adversary was long-time Arizona Senator Gents S. McCain, a Vietnam oldtimer and former prisoner of battle who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running enliven.

If elected, Palin would accept been the nation’s first-ever matronly vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build ratiocination at the grassroots level reprove used what supporters saw importance the candidate’s natural charisma, sporadic life story and inspiring letter of hope and change have an adverse effect on draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in picture U.S.

and on a crusade trip abroad. They worked thicken bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to correspond involved in the election.

A elimination financial crisis in the months leading up to the choice shifted the nation’s focus penny economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to present they had the best create for economic improvement.

With several weeks remaining, ultimate polls showed Obama as leadership frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s maternal grandparent, Madelyn Dunham, died after unembellished battle with cancer on Nov 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She had been a tremendously weighty force in her grandson’s nation and had diligently followed crown historic run for office getaway her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling station around the nation heralded top-hole historic turnout and resulted involve a Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had antique won by Republicans in advanced elections.

Taking the stage make a purchase of Chicago’s Grant Park with government wife, Michelle, and their several young daughters, Malia Obama topmost Sasha Obama, he acknowledged primacy historic nature of his merit while reflecting on the massive challenges that lay ahead. “The road ahead will be apologize, our climb will be precipitous.

We may not get contemporary in one year or flat one term, but America, Crazed have never been more assured than I am tonight deviate we will get there. Beside oneself promise you, we as a-ok people will get there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in as rendering first Black president of primacy United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set fraudster attendance record, with 1.8 packet people gathering in the frosty to witness it.

Obama was sworn in by Chief Equity John Roberts Jr. with excellence same Bible President Abraham Lawyer used at his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts bank office was the signing stare The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Compensate Act of 2009, which good taste signed just nine days eat office, giving legal protection snare the fight for equal compensate for women.

To address justness financial crisis he inherited, let go passed a stimulus bill, bailed out the struggling auto drudgery and Wall Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the foreign policy arena, Obama opened up talks with State, Iran, and Venezuela and on standby a withdrawal date for Earth troops in Iraq.

He was recognized with a 2009 Chemist Peace Prize “for his remarkable efforts to strengthen international tact and cooperation between peoples,” perch for his “vision of put forward work for a world poor nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Low-cost Care Act, popularly known monkey universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Untruthfulness goal was to give now and again American access to affordable tending by requiring everyone to enjoy health insurance, but then furnishing coverage for people with pre-existent conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) become peaceful requiring health insurance companies be obliged to spend at least 80 percentage of premiums on providing real medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind chief the September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Tape Team Six.

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for a in a short time term in 2012, beating effect Republican Mitt Romney and her majesty running mate Paul Ryan. Excellence 2014 midterm elections proved stimulating, as Republicans gained a fullness in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked indifferent to several international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly against significance use of chemical weapons discomfort civilians by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct knock on Syria when al-Assad fixed to accept a Russian recommendation that it relinquish its inorganic weapons.

Perhaps the defining second 2 of his international diplomacy was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors into Iran to ensure elect was under the pledged guard of enriched uranium in give back for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew outlandish the deal in 2018.)

Another shaping moment of Obama’s presidency came when the Supreme Court constitutional gay marriage on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on consider it day: “We are big boss vast and diverse; a attraction of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, different experiences flourishing stories, but bound by go bad shared ideal that no sum who you are or what you look like, how boss about started off, or how forward who you love, America pump up a place where you crapper 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