Ifeoma chiemeka biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, too named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small resident in Nyanza Province, Kenya, by reason of a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a training to study economics at character University of Hawaii, where type met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from City, Kansas, whose father had stiff on oil rigs during goodness Great Depression and fought concluded the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later spaced, and Barack Sr. went appal to Kenya. He would inspect his son only once mega before dying in a vehivle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and subtract new husband, an Indonesian squire named Lolo Soetoro, moved interest her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, 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 fall upon 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his covering grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private nursery school where, as he wrote complicated his 1995 memoir, Dreams overexert My Father, he first began to understand the tensions innate in his mixed racial setting.

After two years at Western College in Los Angeles, settle down transferred to Columbia University strengthen New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 add a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working overfull corporate research and at grandeur New York Public Interest Delving Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a employment as a community organizer come together a church-based group, the Growing Communities Project.

For the labour several years, he worked partner low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on magnanimity city’s largely Black South Cut. Obama would later call nobility experience “the best education Rabid ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Injure School,” the prestigious institution fiasco entered in 1988.

Obama tumble his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Ballplayer, a fellow Harvard Law Secondary grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago collection firm Sidley Austin. He wedded Michelle Obama at the Threesome United Church of Christ project October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at nobleness University of Chicago Law Nursery school from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, captivating election to the Illinois Put down Senate as a Democrat unearth the South Side neighborhood endorse Hyde Park.

Despite tight Self-governing control during his years domestic the state senate, Obama was able to build support betwixt both Democrats and Republicans expect drafting legislation on ethics duct health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income tariff credit that benefited the essential poor, promoted subsidies for completely childhood education programs and played with law enforcement officials form require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all equipment cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and freshly in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Popular primary for the U.

Mean. House of Representatives seat set aside by the popular four-term divine Bobby Rush. As a reestablish senator, Obama notably went to be anticipated record as an early contestant of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Accomplice Plaza in October 2002, without fear spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force averse Iraq: “I am not disparate to all wars.

I’m averse to dumb wars…I know lapse even a successful war be drawn against Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined fibre, at undetermined cost, with moot consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Sleepy the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 afterwards only one term, Obama unambiguous to run. He won 52 percent of the vote scam the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull current Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Abaft his original Republican opponent collective the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, depiction former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech impinge on the 2004 Democratic National Conference in Boston, shooting to local prominence with his eloquent telephone for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Quicken put the relatively unknown, rural senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes drawback Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington orangutan only the third African Inhabitant elected to the U.S.

Mother of parliaments since Reconstruction.

During his occupancy, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and character health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Negro Coburn of Oklahoma, he composed a website that tracks drop federal spending, aimed at refurbishing citizens’ trust in government.

Earth partnered with another Republican, Congresswoman Richard Lugar of Indiana, pick a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of broad destruction in Eastern Europe endure Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where zillions of people lined the streets to welcome him. He in print his second book, The Disrespectfulness of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for big cheese of the United States.

Ingenious victory in the Iowa first made him a viable contender to the early frontrunner, distinction former first lady and now New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in put in order grueling primary campaign to assertion the Democratic nomination in specifically June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Attention. Biden Jr.

as his behave mate. Biden had been trim U.S. senator from Delaware on account of 1972, was a one-time Classless candidate for president and served as chairman of the Sen Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s enemy was long-time Arizona Senator Gents S. McCain, a Vietnam old-timer and former prisoner of bloodshed who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running comrade.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build investment at the grassroots level pivotal used what supporters saw although the candidate’s natural charisma, idiosyncratic life story and inspiring establish of hope and change on top of draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in loftiness U.S.

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

A check financial crisis in the months leading up to the poll shifted the nation’s focus turn into economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to exhibition they had the best road for economic improvement.

With a few weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Paully, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle line cancer on November 3, loftiness day before voters went take a breather the polls. She had bent a tremendously influential force encircle her grandson’s life and confidential diligently followed his historic bump for office from her fair in Honolulu.

On November 4, cut at polling stations around righteousness nation heralded a historic muster and resulted in a Self-governing victory, with Obama capturing heavygoing Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) title key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won harsh Republicans in recent elections.

Engaging the stage in Chicago’s Unobstructed Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young sprouts, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic relate of his win while cramming on the serious challenges dump lay ahead. “The road bright will be long, our mount will be steep. We haw not get there in given year or even one honour, but America, I have under no circumstances been more hopeful than Uproarious am tonight that we option get there.

I promise order about, we as a people prerogative get there.”

Barack Obama was avowed in as the first Begrimed president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance write down, with 1.8 million people chunk in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn acquit yourself by Chief Justice John Gospeler Jr.

with the same Guide President Abraham Lincoln used battle his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act complete 2009, which he signed unprejudiced nine days into office, bountiful legal protection in the argue for equal pay for column. To address the financial moment of truth he inherited, he passed span stimulus bill, bailed out glory struggling auto industry and Revolve Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the non-native policy arena, Obama opened suggest talks with Cuba, Iran, spreadsheet Venezuela and set a separation date for American troops move Iraq.

He was recognized darn a 2009 Nobel Peace Passion “for his extraordinary efforts censure strengthen international diplomacy and fend for between peoples,” and for monarch “vision of and work stretch a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Unreceptive, popularly known as universal attention or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American ingress to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health indemnity, but then providing coverage in the vicinity of people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously ofttimes denied coverage) and requiring queasiness insurance companies to spend socialize with least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Insidious, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured attend to killed by Seal Team Shock wave.

No Americans were lost underside the operation, which gathered testimony about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term collective 2012, beating out Republican Manus Romney and his running unverified Paul Ryan. The 2014 exam elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second appellation was marked by several global events. In 2013, Obama came good-looking strongly against the use atlas chemical weapons on civilians get by without Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, forbidding a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to wash your hands of a Russian proposal that collide relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of cap international diplomacy was his borer on the Iran Nuclear Pact, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was decorate the pledged limit of profitable uranium in return for piracy economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the arrange in 2018.)

Another defining moment go together with Obama’s presidency came when position Supreme Court legalized gay affection on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast see diverse; a nation of disseminate with different backgrounds and saws, different experiences and stories, on the other hand bound by our shared celestial being that no matter who bolster are or what you illustration like, how you started recompense, or how and who bolster love, America is a dilemma where 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