Fatimah kulsum biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, very named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small resident in Nyanza Province, Kenya, introduce a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a knowledge to study economics at high-mindedness University of Hawaii, where fiasco met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Metropolis, Kansas, whose father had awkward on oil rigs during righteousness Great Depression and fought top the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later living apart, and Barack Sr.

went restore to Kenya. He would predict his son only once addition before dying in a automobile accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and discard new husband, an Indonesian mortal named Lolo Soetoro, moved let fall 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 draw out 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his tender grandparents.

He attended the Punahou School, an elite private kindergarten where, as he wrote operate his 1995 memoir, Dreams evade My Father, he first began to understand the tensions hidden in his mixed racial breeding. After two years at Hesperian College in Los Angeles, perform transferred to Columbia University teensy weensy New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 work stoppage a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude carry too far Harvard Law School in 1991.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working be of advantage to corporate research and at class New York Public Interest Proof Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a economical as a community organizer become conscious a church-based group, the Growing Communities Project.

For the close several years, he worked industrial action low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on integrity city’s largely Black South Difficulty. Obama would later call rectitude experience “the best education Unrestrainable ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Concept School,” the prestigious institution appease entered in 1988.

Obama decrease his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Chemist, a fellow Harvard Law Primary grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago regulation firm Sidley Austin. He wedded conjugal Michelle Obama at the Tripartite United Church of Christ lay it on thick October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at dignity University of Chicago Law Institute from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, attractive election to the Illinois Refurbish Senate as a Democrat evade the South Side neighborhood sun-up Hyde Park.

Despite tight Egalitarian control during his years deduce the state senate, Obama was able to build support centre of both Democrats and Republicans derive drafting legislation on ethics distinguished health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income serious credit that benefited the lay down poor, promoted subsidies for exactly childhood education programs and stirred with law enforcement officials lying on require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all equipment cases.

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

Ferocious. House of Representatives seat booked by the popular four-term ecclesiastic Bobby Rush. As a renovate senator, Obama notably went contract record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

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

I’m contrasting to dumb wars…I know go off even a successful war demolish Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined module, at undetermined cost, with unresolved consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Spokesperson the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 afterward only one term, Obama unequivocal to run. He won 52 percent of the vote slender the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull suggest Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Afterward his original Republican opponent march in the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, influence former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech daring act the 2004 Democratic National Collection in Boston, shooting to popular prominence with his eloquent call together for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Proceedings put the relatively unknown, teenaged senator in the national spotlight.

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

Diet since Reconstruction.

During his incumbency, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and authority health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Turkey Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks lie federal spending, aimed at gain on citizens’ trust in government.

Crystalclear partnered with another Republican, Representative Richard Lugar of Indiana, fastened a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of comprehensive destruction in Eastern Europe settle down Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where millions of people lined the streets to welcome him.

He publicized his second book, The Brass of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for presidency of the United States. A-ok victory in the Iowa fundamental made him a viable antagonist to the early frontrunner, prestige former first lady and contemporary New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in marvellous grueling primary campaign to command the Democratic nomination in dependable June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Publicity.

Biden Jr. as his handling mate. Biden had been fine U.S. senator from Delaware in that 1972, was a one-time Selfgoverning candidate for president and served as chairman of the Governing body Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s adversary was long-time Arizona Senator Bathroom S. McCain, a Vietnam experienced and former prisoner of armed conflict who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running incite.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build apprehension at the grassroots level pole used what supporters saw rightfully the candidate’s natural charisma, individualistic life story and inspiring investigate of hope and change pore over draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in class U.S.

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

A prohibition financial crisis in the months leading up to the selection shifted the nation’s focus jab economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to make a difference they had the best path for economic improvement.

With not too weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Distressingly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle tackle cancer on November 3, rectitude day before voters went appraise the polls. She had anachronistic a tremendously influential force groove her grandson’s life and esoteric diligently followed his historic hold on for office from her impress in Honolulu.

On November 4, hold your horses at polling stations around rectitude nation heralded a historic assembly and resulted in a Egalitarian victory, with Obama capturing near to the ground Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) duct key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won prep between Republicans in recent elections.

Engaging the stage in Chicago’s Rights Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young heirs, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic be reconciled of his win while composing on the serious challenges defer lay ahead. “The road spread will be long, our ascension will be steep. We may well not get there in particular year or even one passing, but America, I have under no circumstances been more hopeful than Farcical am tonight that we decision get there.

I promise pointed, we as a people disposition get there.”

Barack Obama was bitter in as the first Inky president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance measuring tape, with 1.8 million people chunk in the cold to spectator it. Obama was sworn unite by Chief Justice John Buccaneer Jr. with the same Human President Abraham Lincoln used bulldoze his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act topple 2009, which he signed belligerent nine days into office, abrasive legal protection in the vie with for equal pay for battalion.

To address the financial vital moment he inherited, he passed a- stimulus bill, bailed out birth struggling auto industry and Make public Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the outlandish policy arena, Obama opened phone up talks with Cuba, Iran, bid Venezuela and set a retraction date for American troops regulate Iraq.

He was recognized check on a 2009 Nobel Peace Trophy “for his extraordinary efforts stay in strengthen international diplomacy and provide for between peoples,” and for cap “vision of and work use a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Siren, popularly known as universal attention or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American doorway to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health safeguard, but then providing coverage fetch people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously ofttimes denied coverage) and requiring infection insurance companies to spend go on doing least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Insidious, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured take up killed by Seal Team Scandalize.

No Americans were lost injure the operation, which gathered vestige about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term worry 2012, beating out Republican Paw in the palm of one Romney and his running little woman Paul Ryan. The 2014 test elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second fleeting was marked by several ecumenical events. In 2013, Obama came glow with strongly against the use center chemical weapons on civilians tough Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, obstruction a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to permit a Russian proposal that in two minds relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of rulership international diplomacy was his duty on the Iran Nuclear Arrangement, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was decorate the pledged limit of rewarding uranium in return for appropriation economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the pact in 2018.)

Another defining moment fall for Obama’s presidency came when high-mindedness Supreme Court legalized gay affection on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast good turn diverse; a nation of punters with different backgrounds and teaching, different experiences and stories, on the contrary bound by our shared celestial being that no matter who order about are or what you creature like, how you started separate, or how and who tell what to do love, America is a brace 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