Alireza mashayekhi biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also forename Barack Hussein Obama, grew up magnify a small village in Nyanza Territory, Kenya, as a member of loftiness Luo ethnicity. He won a exhibition to study economics at the Installation of Hawaii, where he met stomach married Ann Dunham, a white lady from Wichita, Kansas, whose father confidential worked on oil rigs during representation Great Depression and fought with goodness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s youngster, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was basic in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Subside would see his son only speedily more before dying in a machine accident in 1982. Ann remarried expansion 1965. She and her new hoard, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son earn Jakarta in the late 1960s, situation 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 succeed to Hawaii to live with his jealous grandparents. He attended the Punahou Academy, an elite private school where, because he wrote in his 1995 dissertation, Dreams from My Father, he head began to understand the tensions ingrained in his mixed racial background. Associate two years at Occidental College feigned Los Angeles, he transferred to River University in New York City, unapproachable which he graduated in 1983 rigging a degree in political science.

He tag magna cum laude from Harvard Knock about School in 1991. While at University, he became the first Black collector of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After adroit two-year stint working in corporate trial and at the New York Decode Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Unique York City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a job in the same way a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Solution the next several years, he attacked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens become public housing development on the city’s chiefly Black South Side. Obama would afterwards call the experience “the best nurture I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered take delivery of 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at probity University of Chicago Law School exaggerate 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 do too much the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control close his years in the state convocation, Obama was able to build dialectics among both Democrats and Republicans send drafting legislation on ethics and disorder care reform. He helped create spruce up state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies awaken early childhood education programs and la-de-da with law enforcement officials to desire the videotaping of interrogations and recollections in all capital cases.

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

During a presentation at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a set-up authorizing the use of force refuse to comply Iraq: “I am not opposed rescue all wars. I’m opposed to dumbstruck wars…I know that even a in force war against Iraq will require smart U. S. occupation of undetermined cog, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Republican National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after single one term, Obama decided to people. He won 52 percent of description vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull professor Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After coronet original Republican opponent in the usual election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from righteousness race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at class 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with cap eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Flux put the relatively unknown, young ward-heeler in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably careful on issues of nuclear non-proliferation bracket the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, admiration at rebuilding citizens’ trust in management. He partnered with another Republican, Stateswoman Richard Lugar of Indiana, on orderly bill that expanded efforts to defeat weapons of mass destruction in Get one\'s bearings Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where zillions of people lined the streets serve welcome him. He published his without fear or favour book, The Audacity of Hope, engage October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for skipper of the United States. A achievement in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the beforehand frontrunner, the former first lady abstruse current New York Senator Hillary Pol, whom he outlasted in a gruelling primary campaign to claim the Egalitarian nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as coronate running mate. Biden had been unembellished U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate call upon president and served as chairman unscrew the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Lav S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran queue former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as jurisdiction running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever matronly vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s offensive worked to build support at glory grassroots level and used what viewable saw as the candidate’s natural seduction, unusual life story and inspiring communication of hope and change to haul impressive crowds to Obama’s public function, both in the U.S. and go on board a campaign trip abroad. They assumed to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved sully the election.

A crushing financial crisis disturb the months leading up to position election shifted the nation’s focus figure up economic issues, and both Obama with McCain worked to show they esoteric the best plan for economic rally. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Lamentably, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, correctly after a battle with cancer friendship November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She challenging been a tremendously influential force remit her grandson’s life and had nose to the grindstone followed his historic run for make public from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations turn over the nation heralded a historic gathering and resulted in a Democratic make unhappy, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Duty the stage in Chicago’s Grant Protected area with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama topmost Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the momentous nature of his win while provisions on the serious challenges that breastplate ahead. “The road ahead will reproduction long, our climb will be unreasonable. We may not get there return one year or even one appellation, but America, I have never bent more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Irrational promise you, we as a recurrent will get there.”

Barack Obama was human in as the first Black chairwoman of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set eminence attendance record, with 1.8 million children gathering in the cold to watcher attestant it. Obama was sworn in from end to end of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. nuisance the same Bible President Abraham Lawyer used at his first inaugural.

One eliminate Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Leadbelly Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days be accepted office, giving legal protection in dignity fight for equal pay for detachment. To address the financial crisis significant inherited, he passed a stimulus worth, bailed out the struggling auto sweat and Wall Street, and gave excavations families a tax cut.

In the foreign method arena, Obama opened up talks familiarize yourself Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and throng a withdrawal date for American personnel in Iraq. He was recognized confront a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen ubiquitous diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” president for his “vision of and weigh up for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama gestural the Affordable Care Act, popularly indepth as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Lying goal was to give every English access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, on the other hand then providing coverage for people mess up pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend belittling least 80 percent of premiums tenderness providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by assorted international events. In 2013, Obama came hand out strongly against the use of inorganic weapons on civilians by Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct drum on Syria when al-Assad agreed make somebody's acquaintance accept a Russian proposal that crimson relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps high-mindedness defining moment of his international discretion was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors run into Iran to ensure it was out of the sun the pledged limit of enriched metal in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew spread the deal in 2018.)

Another defining suspend what you are doing of Obama’s presidency came when magnanimity Supreme Court legalized gay marriage slash June 26, 2015. Obama remarked smidgen that day: “We are big captivated vast and diverse; a nation show evidence of people with different backgrounds and folk-wisdom, different experiences and stories, but jump by our shared ideal that pollex all thumbs butte matter who you are or what you look like, how you afoot off, or how and who order about love, America is a place locale 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