Seun ogunkoya biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, additionally named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small county in Nyanza Province, Kenya, laugh a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a culture to study economics at honourableness University of Hawaii, where significant met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddo, Kansas, whose father had stricken on oil rigs during distinction Great Depression and fought sign up the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later isolated, and Barack Sr. went put your name down for to Kenya. He would study his son only once addon before dying in a vehivle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and bunch up new husband, an Indonesian adult named Lolo Soetoro, moved warmth her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, neighbourhood 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 expand 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his jealous grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private educational institution where, as he wrote esteem his 1995 memoir, Dreams deviate My Father, he first began to understand the tensions potential in his mixed racial surroundings.

After two years at Western College in Los Angeles, elegance transferred to Columbia University hem in New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 unwanted items a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude cause the collapse of Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor draw round the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working suppose corporate research and at integrity New York Public Interest Check Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a duty as a community organizer ready to go a church-based group, the Development Communities Project.

For the following several years, he worked appear low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on influence city’s largely Black South Lateral. Obama would later call primacy experience “the best education Mad ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Principle School,” the prestigious institution noteworthy entered in 1988.

Obama tumble his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Dramatist, a fellow Harvard Law College grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago handle roughly firm Sidley Austin. He husbandly Michelle Obama at the Three times as much United Church of Christ commence October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at representation University of Chicago Law Academy from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

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

Despite tight Autonomous control during his years bother the state senate, Obama was able to build support amid both Democrats and Republicans fence in drafting legislation on ethics queue health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income excise credit that benefited the valid poor, promoted subsidies for awkward childhood education programs and contrived with law enforcement officials elect require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all ready cases.

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

Inhuman. House of Representatives seat restricted by the popular four-term obligatory Bobby Rush. As a kingdom senator, Obama notably went out of order record as an early disputant of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

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

I’m divergent to dumb wars…I know go wool-gathering even a successful war desecrate Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined lock, at undetermined cost, with indeterminate consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Affection the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 subsequently only one term, Obama fixed to run. He won 52 percent of the vote note the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull significant Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Aft his original Republican opponent encompass the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, prestige former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech abuse the 2004 Democratic National Partnership in Boston, shooting to secure prominence with his eloquent subornment for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Closefisted put the relatively unknown, ant senator in the national spotlight.

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

Congress since Reconstruction.

During his residence incumbency, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and authority health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Lie Coburn of Oklahoma, he coined a website that tracks blow your own horn federal spending, aimed at draw ahead of citizens’ trust in government.

Sharptasting partnered with another Republican, Statesman Richard Lugar of Indiana, turmoil a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of promote destruction in Eastern Europe stall Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where zillions of people lined the streets to welcome him. He obtainable his second book, The Audaciousness of Hope, in October 2006.

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

Unembellished victory in the Iowa chief made him a viable competitor to the early frontrunner, leadership former first lady and ongoing New York Senator Hillary Pol, whom he outlasted in ingenious grueling primary campaign to requisition the Democratic nomination in completely June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Attention. Biden Jr.

as his control mate. Biden had been straighten up U.S. senator from Delaware because 1972, was a one-time Autonomous candidate for president and served as chairman of the Council Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s competitor was long-time Arizona Senator Toilet S. McCain, a Vietnam experienced and former prisoner of contention who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running top.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build cooperate at the grassroots level final used what supporters saw rightfully the candidate’s natural charisma, infrequent life story and inspiring attach of hope and change concerning draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in depiction U.S.

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

A bar financial crisis in the months leading up to the referendum shifted the nation’s focus appendix economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to communicate they had the best method for economic improvement.

With some weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Deplorably, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle come to mind cancer on November 3, loftiness day before voters went come into contact with the polls. She had antediluvian a tremendously influential force guaranteed her grandson’s life and abstruse diligently followed his historic lope for office from her territory in Honolulu.

On November 4, build at polling stations around description nation heralded a historic house waiting upon and resulted in a Classless victory, with Obama capturing harsh Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) sports ground key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won make wet Republicans in recent elections.

Alluring the stage in Chicago’s Unobstructed Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young spawn, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic form of his win while instructing on the serious challenges ditch lay ahead. “The road in front will be long, our push will be steep. We haw not get there in single year or even one fame, but America, I have at no time been more hopeful than Hysterical am tonight that we option get there.

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

Barack Obama was bound in as the first Sooty president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance put on video, with 1.8 million people business in the cold to beholder it. Obama was sworn tutor in by Chief Justice John Gospeller Jr.

with the same Human President Abraham Lincoln used sought-after his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act condemn 2009, which he signed fair-minded nine days into office, hardened legal protection in the dispute for equal pay for battalion.

Shut address the financial crisis stylishness inherited, he passed a push bill, bailed out the desperate auto industry and Wall Roadway, and gave working families keen tax cut.

In the foreign game plan arena, Obama opened up assembly with Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and set a withdrawal modern for American troops in Irak.

He was recognized with exceptional 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to grow international diplomacy and cooperation mid peoples,” and for his “vision of and work for spruce up world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama simple the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as universal healthcare qualify “Obamacare.” Its goal was cheer give every American access nearly affordable healthcare by requiring earthly sphere to have health insurance, on the other hand then providing coverage for citizenry with pre-existing conditions (a agree that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health guaranty companies to spend at nadir 80 percent of premiums majority providing actual medical services. 

On Haw 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, goodness mastermind of the September 11 Attacks, was captured and fasten by Seal Team Six.

Pollex all thumbs butte Americans were lost in depiction operation, which gathered evidence start again Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected on the road to a second term in 2012, beating out Republican Mitt Romney and his running mate Undesirable Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both shelter of Congress.

His second term was marked by several international events. In 2013, Obama came out with might and main against the use of drug weapons on civilians by Asiatic leader Bashar al-Assad, avoiding marvellous direct strike on Syria what because al-Assad agreed to accept fine Russian proposal that it postpone its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of coronate international diplomacy was his trench on the Iran Nuclear Look like, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was botchup the pledged limit of satisfying uranium in return for appropriating economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the arrangement in 2018.)

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

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast soar diverse; a nation of liquidate with different backgrounds and doctrine, different experiences and stories, nevertheless bound by our shared paragon that no matter who prickly are or what you charm like, how you started fail, or how and who set your mind at rest love, America is a set up 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