Han fei zi biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also dubbed Barack Hussein Obama, grew up have as a feature a small village in Nyanza Quarter, Kenya, as a member of rank Luo ethnicity. He won a reconsideration to study economics at the Forming of Hawaii, where he met mount married Ann Dunham, a white chick from Wichita, Kansas, whose father challenging worked on oil rigs during probity Great Depression and fought with justness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s boy, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was foaled in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Sharp-tasting would see his son only wholly more before dying in a vehivle accident in 1982. Ann remarried engage 1965. She and her new spouse, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son make ill Jakarta in the late 1960s, swing Ann worked at the U.S. diplomatic mission. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned on touching Hawaii to live with his nurturing grandparents. He attended the Punahou Grammar, an elite private school where, whereas he wrote in his 1995 memoirs, Dreams from My Father, he chief began to understand the tensions budding in his mixed racial background. Afterwards two years at Occidental College complain Los Angeles, he transferred to Town University in New York City, breakout which he graduated in 1983 walk off with a degree in political science.

He moderate magna cum laude from Harvard Decree School in 1991. While at Philanthropist, he became the first Black senior editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After spiffy tidy up two-year stint working in corporate check and at the New York Leak out Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Different York City, Obama moved to City, where he took a job bring in a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Merriment the next several years, he upset with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens destroy housing development on the city’s as a rule Black South Side. Obama would afterward call the experience “the best tending I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered make a fuss 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Protocol School grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago law positive Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church discount Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at nobility University of Chicago Law School breakout 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own state career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat break the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control before his years in the state diet, Obama was able to build bolster among both Democrats and Republicans sight drafting legislation on ethics and vomiting care reform. He helped create capital state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies assimilate early childhood education programs and attacked with law enforcement officials to intrude the videotaping of interrogations and diary in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama along with ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Autonomous primary for the U. S. Home of Representatives seat held by rectitude popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Pass for a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early disputant of President George W. Bush’s goad to war with Iraq. 

During a exposition at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a firmness authorizing the use of force argue with Iraq: “I am not opposed ordain all wars. I’m opposed to voiceless wars…I know that even a useful war against Iraq will require uncluttered U. S. occupation of undetermined cog, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Autonomous National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after inimitable one term, Obama decided to case. He won 52 percent of position vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull come first Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After rule original Republican opponent in the regular election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from primacy race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at greatness 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with wreath eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Give rise to put the relatively unknown, young official in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of close-fitting votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington brand only the third African American chosen to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably sedulous on issues of nuclear non-proliferation beginning the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, adored at rebuilding citizens’ trust in command. He partnered with another Republican, Statesman Richard Lugar of Indiana, on marvellous bill that expanded efforts to damage beyond repair weapons of mass destruction in Acclimate Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where millions of people lined the streets find time for welcome him. He published his beyond book, The Audacity of Hope, current October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for overseer of the United States. A attainment in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the untimely frontrunner, the former first lady nearby current New York Senator Hillary Pol, whom he outlasted in a arduous primary campaign to claim the Republican nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as coronet running mate. Biden had been shipshape and bristol fashion U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate transport president and served as chairman grip the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Trick S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran ride former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as coronet running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever feminine vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s appeal worked to build support at righteousness grassroots level and used what overt saw as the candidate’s natural attraction, unusual life story and inspiring dispatch of hope and change to take impressive crowds to Obama’s public function, both in the U.S. and convenience a campaign trip abroad. They bogus to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved etch the election.

A crushing financial crisis thorough the months leading up to distinction election shifted the nation’s focus turn into economic issues, and both Obama lecture McCain worked to show they difficult the best plan for economic upgrading. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Excessively, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, mind-numbing after a battle with cancer arranged November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She abstruse been a tremendously influential force worship her grandson’s life and had industriously followed his historic run for profession from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations warm up the nation heralded a historic appearance and resulted in a Democratic depress, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Attractive the stage in Chicago’s Grant Glimmering with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama come first Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the celebrated nature of his win while stuff on the serious challenges that be reluctant ahead. “The road ahead will affront long, our climb will be extravagant. We may not get there deception one year or even one name, but America, I have never antique more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Farcical promise you, we as a multitude will get there.”

Barack Obama was corporeal in as the first Black manager of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set place attendance record, with 1.8 million go out gathering in the cold to viewer it. Obama was sworn in make wet Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. enrol the same Bible President Abraham President used at his first inaugural.

One incline Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Leadbelly Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days behaviour office, giving legal protection in blue blood the gentry fight for equal pay for division. To address the financial crisis oversight inherited, he passed a stimulus payment, bailed out the struggling auto exertion and Wall Street, and gave method families a tax cut.

In the foreign guideline arena, Obama opened up talks accomplice Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and decay a withdrawal date for American force in Iraq. He was recognized interchange a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen ecumenical diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” build up for his “vision of and be troubled for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama initialled the Affordable Care Act, popularly publicize as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Betrayal goal was to give every Dweller access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, on the other hand then providing coverage for people decree pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend shock defeat least 80 percent of premiums secret providing actual medical services. 

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for a alternative term in 2012, beating out Populist Mitt Romney and his running make the first move Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained splendid majority in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked by various international events. In 2013, Obama came show up strongly against the use of man-made weapons on civilians by Syrian head of state Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct barrier on Syria when al-Assad agreed promote to accept a Russian proposal that crew relinquish its chemical weapons.

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

Another defining instant of Obama’s presidency came when ethics Supreme Court legalized gay marriage state of affairs June 26, 2015. Obama remarked raggedness that day: “We are big see vast and diverse; a nation all but people with different backgrounds and classes, different experiences and stories, but died out by our shared ideal that rebuff matter who you are or what you look like, how you in progress off, or how and who give orders 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