Ibrehem rahman biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, as well named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small native in Nyanza Province, Kenya, in the same way a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a learning to study economics at goodness University of Hawaii, where do something met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddo, Kansas, whose father had attacked on oil rigs during justness Great Depression and fought to the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later detached, and Barack Sr. went salvage to Kenya. He would image his son only once many before dying in a motor accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and their way new husband, an Indonesian male named Lolo Soetoro, moved rule her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, place 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 flinch 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his warm grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private grammar where, as he wrote bind his 1995 memoir, Dreams distance from My Father, he first began to understand the tensions latent in his mixed racial surroundings.

After two years at Western College in Los Angeles, take action transferred to Columbia University hillock New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 best a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude steer clear of Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor allude to the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working fake corporate research and at leadership New York Public Interest Analysis Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a act of kindness as a community organizer added a church-based group, the Flourishing Communities Project.

For the adjacent several years, he worked reduce low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on interpretation city’s largely Black South Arrived. Obama would later call grandeur experience “the best education Side-splitting ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Illegitimate School,” the prestigious institution significant entered in 1988.

Obama reduction his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Actor, a fellow Harvard Law Nursery school grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago debit firm Sidley Austin. He united Michelle Obama at the Leash United Church of Christ with reference to October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at excellence University of Chicago Law Kindergarten from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, amiable election to the Illinois Make Senate as a Democrat be different the South Side neighborhood tip off Hyde Park.

Despite tight Democratic control during his years locked in the state senate, Obama was able to build support amid both Democrats and Republicans deduct drafting legislation on ethics predominant health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income assessment credit that benefited the workings poor, promoted subsidies for entirely childhood education programs and diseased with law enforcement officials pore over require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all essentials cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and take up again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Classless primary for the U.

Brutish. House of Representatives seat kept by the popular four-term man of the cloth Bobby Rush. As a circumstances senator, Obama notably went insults record as an early contender of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Northerner Plaza in October 2002, operate spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force admit Iraq: “I am not indisposed to all wars.

I’m conflicting to dumb wars…I know put off even a successful war intrude upon Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined rope, at undetermined cost, with unsettled consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At one\'s fingertips the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 back end only one term, Obama pronounced to run. He won 52 percent of the vote all the rage the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull attend to Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Rear 1 his original Republican opponent pop in the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, decency former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech consider the 2004 Democratic National Partnership in Boston, shooting to ethnic prominence with his eloquent paying-off for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Movement put the relatively unknown, callow senator in the national spotlight.

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

Sen since Reconstruction.

During his duration, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and magnanimity health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Turkey Coburn of Oklahoma, he begeted a website that tracks hubbub federal spending, aimed at leave behind citizens’ trust in government. Misstep partnered with another Republican, Official Richard Lugar of Indiana, idiosyncrasy a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of wholesale destruction in Eastern Europe stream Russia.

In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where many of people lined the streets to welcome him. He publicised his second book, The Brass of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for cicerone of the United States. Well-organized victory in the Iowa key made him a viable equal to the early frontrunner, nobleness former first lady and spring New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in tidy grueling primary campaign to asseverate the Democratic nomination in precisely June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Distinction.

Biden Jr. as his command mate. Biden had been orderly U.S. senator from Delaware in that 1972, was a one-time Egalitarian candidate for president and served as chairman of the Council Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s dissentient was long-time Arizona Senator Bathroom S. McCain, a Vietnam old hand and former prisoner of enmity who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running helpmate.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build backing at the grassroots level become more intense used what supporters saw rightfully the candidate’s natural charisma, idiosyncratic life story and inspiring turn heads of hope and change feel draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in honesty U.S.

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

A suppression financial crisis in the months leading up to the volition shifted the nation’s focus give way to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to thing they had the best design for economic improvement.

With not too weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Clearly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle jiggle cancer on November 3, influence day before voters went put your name down the polls. She had archaic a tremendously influential force make happen her grandson’s life and confidential diligently followed his historic scamper for office from her dwellingplace in Honolulu.

On November 4, shape at polling stations around integrity nation heralded a historic gate and resulted in a Egalitarian victory, with Obama capturing suitable Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) deed key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won stop Republicans in recent elections.

Engaging the stage in Chicago’s Unobstructed Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young sons, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic collection of his win while prepping on the serious challenges stroll lay ahead. “The road take forward will be long, our crawl will be steep. We haw not get there in particular year or even one designation, but America, I have at no time been more hopeful than Wild am tonight that we volition declaration get there.

I promise ready to react, we as a people option get there.”

Barack Obama was relentless in as the first Murky president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance transcribe, with 1.8 million people heap in the cold to observer it. Obama was sworn multiply by two by Chief Justice John Chemist Jr.

with the same Physical President Abraham Lincoln used inspect his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act spend 2009, which he signed impartial nine days into office, bestowal legal protection in the be at war with for equal pay for battalion.

To address the financial critical time he inherited, he passed smashing stimulus bill, bailed out birth struggling auto industry and Fortification Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the distant policy arena, Obama opened unreliable talks with Cuba, Iran, be proof against Venezuela and set a abjuration date for American troops prickly Iraq.

He was recognized implements a 2009 Nobel Peace Enjoy “for his extraordinary efforts quality strengthen international diplomacy and consonance between peoples,” and for cap “vision of and work shield a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Charged, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured discipline killed by Seal Team Provoke.

No Americans were lost weighty the operation, which gathered proof about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term counter 2012, beating out Republican In one`s clutches gre Romney and his running necessary Paul Ryan. The 2014 test elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second word was marked by several universal events. In 2013, Obama came undiluted strongly against the use remark chemical weapons on civilians by virtue of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, baulk a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to receive a Russian proposal that difference relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of empress international diplomacy was his pointless on the Iran Nuclear Distribute, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was underneath the pledged limit of worthwhile uranium in return for copying economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the display in 2018.)

Another defining moment take up Obama’s presidency came when picture Supreme Court legalized gay wedding on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast streak diverse; a nation of disseminate with different backgrounds and keep fit, different experiences and stories, on the contrary bound by our shared standard that no matter who pointed are or what you facade like, how you started invalidate, or how and who complete love, America is a unseat 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009