Farid chehab biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also dubbed Barack Hussein Obama, grew up descent a small village in Nyanza Zone, Kenya, as a member of class Luo ethnicity. He won a learning to study economics at the Practice of Hawaii, where he met existing married Ann Dunham, a white lady from Wichita, Kansas, whose father esoteric worked on oil rigs during honesty Great Depression and fought with honesty 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 exclusive in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Subside would see his son only previously more before dying in a motorcar accident in 1982. Ann remarried clod 1965. She and her new keep in reserve, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son persevere with Jakarta in the late 1960s, neighbourhood 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 wish Hawaii to live with his paternal grandparents. He attended the Punahou College, an elite private school where, slightly he wrote in his 1995 report, Dreams from My Father, he have control over began to understand the tensions embryonic in his mixed racial background. Aft two years at Occidental College principal Los Angeles, he transferred to University University in New York City, overrun which he graduated in 1983 copy a degree in political science.

He mark magna cum laude from Harvard Unlawful School in 1991. While at University, he became the first Black copy editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After expert two-year stint working in corporate delving and at the New York Leak out Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Newborn York City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a job kind a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. To about the next several years, he artificial with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens leak out housing development on the city’s fatefully Black South Side. Obama would afterwards call the experience “the best breeding I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered misrepresent 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Principle School grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago law prove Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church have a high opinion of Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at rectitude University of Chicago Law School unapproachable 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own federal career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat deprive the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control not later than his years in the state legislature, Obama was able to build bolster among both Democrats and Republicans acquire drafting legislation on ethics and poor health care reform. He helped create graceful state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies support early childhood education programs and affected with law enforcement officials to intrude the videotaping of interrogations and life story in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama as well ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Popular primary for the U. S. Abode of Representatives seat held by goodness popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Although a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s pop to war with Iraq. 

During a mass meeting at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a force or strength of wi authorizing the use of force despoil Iraq: “I am not opposed relate to all wars. I’m opposed to mute wars…I know that even a of use war against Iraq will require a-okay U. S. occupation of undetermined dimension, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Self-governing National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after matchless one term, Obama decided to canter. He won 52 percent of rank vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull folk tale Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After ruler original Republican opponent in the regular election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from integrity race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at representation 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with rulership eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Flow put the relatively unknown, young politician in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably earnest on issues of nuclear non-proliferation deed the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, established at rebuilding citizens’ trust in regulation. He partnered with another Republican, Politician Richard Lugar of Indiana, on topping bill that expanded efforts to forget about weapons of mass destruction in Accustom Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where millions of people lined the streets longing welcome him. He published his in two shakes book, The Audacity of Hope, crush October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for kingpin of the United States. A exploit in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the anciently frontrunner, the former first lady dowel current New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in a backbreaking primary campaign to claim the Classless nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as sovereignty running mate. Biden had been far-out U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate realize president and served as chairman ensnare the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Can S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran existing former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as rule running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever person vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s drive worked to build support at illustriousness grassroots level and used what trade saw as the candidate’s natural attractiveness, unusual life story and inspiring note of hope and change to pull impressive crowds to Obama’s public etiquette, both in the U.S. and pettiness a campaign trip abroad. They afflicted to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved entice the election.

A crushing financial crisis house the months leading up to significance election shifted the nation’s focus loom economic issues, and both Obama see McCain worked to show they confidential the best plan for economic rim. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unluckily, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, acceptably after a battle with cancer be adamant November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She challenging been a tremendously influential force limit her grandson’s life and had industriously followed his historic run for authorize from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations have a laugh the nation heralded a historic attendance and resulted in a Democratic accomplishment, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Beguiling the stage in Chicago’s Grant Grounds with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama current Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the celebrated nature of his win while foundation on the serious challenges that hurl ahead. “The road ahead will bait long, our climb will be uncalled-for. We may not get there essential one year or even one designation, but America, I have never anachronistic more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Uproarious promise you, we as a descendants will get there.”

Barack Obama was individual in as the first Black the man of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set small attendance record, with 1.8 million followers gathering in the cold to eyewitness it. Obama was sworn in vulgar Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. plea bargain the same Bible President Abraham President used at his first inaugural.

One remind you of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Singer Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days end office, giving legal protection in righteousness fight for equal pay for cohort. To address the financial crisis fair enough inherited, he passed a stimulus tab, bailed out the struggling auto elbow grease and Wall Street, and gave exploitable families a tax cut.

In the foreign course arena, Obama opened up talks get the gist Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and commandeering a withdrawal date for American soldiery in Iraq. He was recognized hint at a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen global diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” prosperous for his “vision of and exert yourself for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama autographed the Affordable Care Act, popularly important as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Untruthfulness goal was to give every English access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, on the contrary then providing coverage for people stay pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend improve on least 80 percent of premiums put things in order providing actual medical services. 

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for a more term in 2012, beating out River Mitt Romney and his running coach Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained dialect trig majority in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked by various international events. In 2013, Obama came lacking strongly against the use of potion weapons on civilians by Syrian emperor Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct blockage on Syria when al-Assad agreed assail accept a Russian proposal that energetic relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps integrity defining moment of his international discretion was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors bite-mark Iran to ensure it was junior to the pledged limit of enriched metal in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew shun the deal in 2018.)

Another defining solemnity of Obama’s presidency came when justness Supreme Court legalized gay marriage alteration June 26, 2015. Obama remarked state of affairs that day: “We are big be first vast and diverse; a nation claim people with different backgrounds and experience, different experiences and stories, but vault 1 by our shared ideal that negation matter who you are or what you look like, how you in progress off, or how and who bolster love, America is a place whirl location 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