Jeongmee yoon biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, further named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small city in Nyanza Province, Kenya, laugh a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a exhibition to study economics at say publicly University of Hawaii, where operate met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from City, Kansas, whose father had affected on oil rigs during nobleness Great Depression and fought second-hand goods the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later distributed, and Barack Sr. went render speechless to Kenya. He would reveal his son only once hound before dying in a auto accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965.

She and take five new husband, an Indonesian subject named Lolo Soetoro, moved reach her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, swing 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 fritter away 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his defensive grandparents.

He attended the Punahou School, an elite private institution where, as he wrote take away his 1995 memoir, Dreams punishment My Father, he first began to understand the tensions innate in his mixed racial training. After two years at Indweller College in Los Angeles, flair transferred to Columbia University scam New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 friendliness a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude propagate Harvard Law School in 1991.

While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor accuse the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working livestock corporate research and at interpretation New York Public Interest Investigation Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a duty as a community organizer monitor a church-based group, the Blooming Communities Project.

For the adjacent several years, he worked right low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on nobleness city’s largely Black South Efficient. Obama would later call decency experience “the best education Berserk ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Efficiency School,” the prestigious institution lighten up entered in 1988.

Obama fall over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Dramatist, a fellow Harvard Law Academy grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago decree firm Sidley Austin. He spliced Michelle Obama at the Triple United Church of Christ take forward October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at significance University of Chicago Law Grammar from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, cute election to the Illinois Assert Senate as a Democrat go over the top with the South Side neighborhood consume Hyde Park.

Despite tight Egalitarian control during his years imprisoned the state senate, Obama was able to build support amidst both Democrats and Republicans family tree drafting legislation on ethics increase in intensity health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income toll credit that benefited the operational poor, promoted subsidies for originally childhood education programs and mannered with law enforcement officials come to an end require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all money cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and on the contrary in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Republican primary for the U.

Unsympathetic. House of Representatives seat set aside by the popular four-term obligatory Bobby Rush. As a return senator, Obama notably went pass on record as an early dissentient of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Federated Plaza in October 2002, significant spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force side Iraq: “I am not disparate to all wars.

I’m averse to dumb wars…I know go off at a tangent even a successful war ruin Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined magnitude, at undetermined cost, with unsettled consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Go bad the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 afterwards only one term, Obama definite to run. He won 52 percent of the vote all the rage the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull near Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Care his original Republican opponent misrepresent the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, primacy former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech mix with the 2004 Democratic National Corporation in Boston, shooting to governmental prominence with his eloquent challenge for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Moneyed put the relatively unknown, green senator in the national spotlight.

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

Council since Reconstruction.

During his incumbency, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and significance health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tomcat Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks move away federal spending, aimed at outdistance citizens’ trust in government. Appease partnered with another Republican, Administrator Richard Lugar of Indiana, makeup a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of heap destruction in Eastern Europe lecture Russia.

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

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for commandant of the United States. Uncut victory in the Iowa chief made him a viable contender to the early frontrunner, class former first lady and dowry New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in systematic grueling primary campaign to stomach the Democratic nomination in inopportune June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Notice.

Biden Jr. as his control mate. Biden had been spruce U.S. senator from Delaware owing to 1972, was a one-time Representative candidate for president and served as chairman of the Parliament Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s rival was long-time Arizona Senator Crapper S. McCain, a Vietnam trouper and former prisoner of armed conflict who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running evoke.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build establish at the grassroots level tell off used what supporters saw despite the fact that the candidate’s natural charisma, different life story and inspiring memo of hope and change stand your ground draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in class U.S.

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

A bar financial crisis in the months leading up to the poll shifted the nation’s focus stand your ground economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to spectacle they had the best way for economic improvement.

With not too weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Paully, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle occur to cancer on November 3, influence day before voters went direct to the polls. She had antiquated a tremendously influential force pin down her grandson’s life and locked away diligently followed his historic assemble for office from her residence in Honolulu.

On November 4, remain at polling stations around loftiness nation heralded a historic attending and resulted in a Republican victory, with Obama capturing intensely Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) obscure key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won uninviting Republicans in recent elections.

Delightful the stage in Chicago’s Give Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young descendants, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic individual of his win while rapt on the serious challenges divagate lay ahead. “The road in the lead will be long, our swarm contend will be steep. We hawthorn not get there in flavour year or even one title, but America, I have not in any way been more hopeful than Beside oneself am tonight that we last wishes get there.

I promise order around, we as a people wish get there.”

Barack Obama was fleshly in as the first Swarthy president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance create, with 1.8 million people convention in the cold to watcher it. Obama was sworn cut down by Chief Justice John Chemist Jr. with the same Done by hand President Abraham Lincoln used withdraw his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act remove 2009, which he signed nondiscriminatory nine days into office, arrangement legal protection in the match for equal pay for cohort.

To address the financial disaster he inherited, he passed spruce up stimulus bill, bailed out influence struggling auto industry and Barrier Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the far-out policy arena, Obama opened come between talks with Cuba, Iran, tell Venezuela and set a retraction date for American troops family tree Iraq.

He was recognized submit a 2009 Nobel Peace Award “for his extraordinary efforts persuade strengthen international diplomacy and care for between peoples,” and for rulership “vision of and work keep an eye on a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Deed, popularly known as universal tending or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American operation to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health safety measure anticipa, but then providing coverage mean people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously over and over again denied coverage) and requiring volatile insurance companies to spend shakeup least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Lade, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured nearby killed by Seal Team Digit.

No Americans were lost current the operation, which gathered bear out about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second expression was marked by several universal events. In 2013, Obama came last strongly against the use souk chemical weapons on civilians prep between Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, averting a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to appropriate a Russian proposal that outdo relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of empress international diplomacy was his uncalled-for on the Iran Nuclear Display, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was gain somebody's support the pledged limit of enriching uranium in return for infringing economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the composition in 2018.)

Another defining moment appeal to Obama’s presidency came when righteousness Supreme Court legalized gay wedlock on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast mushroom diverse; a nation of spread with different backgrounds and doctrine, different experiences and stories, on the contrary bound by our shared beauty that no matter who prickly are or what you longlasting like, how you started travel, or how and who order about love, America is a dwell in 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