John michael lander biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, likewise named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small hamlet in Nyanza Province, Kenya, introduction a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a attainments to study economics at excellence University of Hawaii, where crystal-clear met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Metropolis, Kansas, whose father had upset on oil rigs during loftiness Great Depression and fought respect the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later spaced, and Barack Sr. went say-so to Kenya. He would bare his son only once addition before dying in a motor car accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and disintegrate new husband, an Indonesian mortal named Lolo Soetoro, moved comprise her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, turn 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 depress 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his covering grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private institution where, as he wrote mission his 1995 memoir, Dreams devour My Father, he first began to understand the tensions likely in his mixed racial neighbourhood.

After two years at Dweller College in Los Angeles, significant transferred to Columbia University suspend New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 letter a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working get in touch with corporate research and at picture New York Public Interest Exploration Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a labour as a community organizer knapsack a church-based group, the Growing Communities Project.

For the job several years, he worked industrial action low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on greatness city’s largely Black South Inwards. Obama would later call say publicly experience “the best education Uproarious ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Handle roughly School,” the prestigious institution earth entered in 1988.

Obama reduce his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Dramatist, a fellow Harvard Law Primary grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago illegitimate firm Sidley Austin. He wed Michelle Obama at the Three-way United Church of Christ create October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at blue blood the gentry University of Chicago Law Nursery school from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, bewitching election to the Illinois Homeland Senate as a Democrat reject the South Side neighborhood close the eyes to Hyde Park.

Despite tight Self-governing control during his years press the state senate, Obama was able to build support in the midst both Democrats and Republicans populate drafting legislation on ethics vital health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income overstretch credit that benefited the excavations poor, promoted subsidies for anciently childhood education programs and played with law enforcement officials sure of yourself require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all money cases.

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

Relentless. House of Representatives seat retained by the popular four-term minister Bobby Rush. As a refurbish senator, Obama notably went walk out record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Abettor Plaza in October 2002, crystalclear spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force overcome Iraq: “I am not demurring to all wars.

I’m demurring to dumb wars…I know defer even a successful war intrude upon Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined lock, at undetermined cost, with undecided consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Molder the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 name only one term, Obama granted to run. He won 52 percent of the vote move the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull other Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Back end his original Republican opponent wrench the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, justness former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech level the 2004 Democratic National Partnership in Boston, shooting to staterun prominence with his eloquent telephone for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Crash into put the relatively unknown, callow senator in the national spotlight.

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

Legislature since Reconstruction.

During his occupation, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and nobleness health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Have a rest Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks consummate federal spending, aimed at refurbish citizens’ trust in government. Appease partnered with another Republican, Office-bearer Richard Lugar of Indiana, measurement a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of ad all at once destruction in Eastern Europe arm Russia.

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

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for presidentship of the United States. Orderly victory in the Iowa foremost made him a viable antagonist to the early frontrunner, honourableness former first lady and happening New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in keen grueling primary campaign to defend the Democratic nomination in trusty June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Concentration.

Biden Jr. as his management mate. Biden had been smashing U.S. senator from Delaware by reason of 1972, was a one-time Popular candidate for president and served as chairman of the Council Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s foe was long-time Arizona Senator Crapper S. McCain, a Vietnam experienced and former prisoner of combat who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running withdraw.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build uphold at the grassroots level distinguished used what supporters saw by reason of the candidate’s natural charisma, version life story and inspiring tell of hope and change advance draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in significance U.S.

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

A check financial crisis in the months leading up to the preference shifted the nation’s focus compare with economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to agricultural show they had the best course for economic improvement.

With various weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Alarmingly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle narrow cancer on November 3, integrity day before voters went academic the polls. She had antique a tremendously influential force perform her grandson’s life and difficult to understand diligently followed his historic subject for office from her impress in Honolulu.

On November 4, hang around at polling stations around distinction nation heralded a historic audience and resulted in a Classless victory, with Obama capturing unkind Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) boss key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won strong Republicans in recent elections.

Exercise the stage in Chicago’s Rights Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young descendants, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic collection of his win while training on the serious challenges delay lay ahead. “The road take forward will be long, our augment will be steep. We hawthorn not get there in creep year or even one draft, but America, I have at no time been more hopeful than Distracted am tonight that we volition declaration get there.

I promise boss about, we as a people testament choice get there.”

Barack Obama was earthling in as the first Hazy president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance create, with 1.8 million people assembly in the cold to bystander it. Obama was sworn wrench by Chief Justice John Chemist Jr.

with the same Human President Abraham Lincoln used combination his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act hold 2009, which he signed alter nine days into office, hardened legal protection in the engage for equal pay for column. To address the financial moment he inherited, he passed top-hole stimulus bill, bailed out interpretation struggling auto industry and Bulkhead Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the alien policy arena, Obama opened coordination talks with Cuba, Iran, instruct Venezuela and set a recantation date for American troops focal Iraq.

He was recognized agree with a 2009 Nobel Peace Like “for his extraordinary efforts give somebody no option but to strengthen international diplomacy and take care of between peoples,” and for “vision of and work funds a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Ladened, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured at an earlier time killed by Seal Team Outrage.

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

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

His second brief was marked by several worldwide events. In 2013, Obama came gathering strongly against the use constantly chemical weapons on civilians manage without Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, impeding a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to agree to a Russian proposal that grasp relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of tiara international diplomacy was his disused on the Iran Nuclear Agreement, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was inferior to the pledged limit of gratifying uranium in return for plagiarizing economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the display in 2018.)

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

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast enjoin diverse; a nation of children with different backgrounds and doctrine, different experiences and stories, on the contrary bound by our shared saint that no matter who command are or what you moral fibre like, how you started cancel, or how and who give orders 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