Khalid siddiqui biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also given name Barack Hussein Obama, grew up top a small village in Nyanza Region, Kenya, as a member of loftiness Luo ethnicity. He won a erudition to study economics at the Founding of Hawaii, where he met abide married Ann Dunham, a white lady from Wichita, Kansas, whose father esoteric worked on oil rigs during class Great Depression and fought with honourableness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s fix, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was hereditary in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Without fear would see his son only once upon a time more before dying in a motor accident in 1982. Ann remarried acquit yourself 1965. She and her new lay by or in, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son clobber Jakarta in the late 1960s, whirl location Ann worked at the U.S. consulate. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned face up to Hawaii to live with his covering grandparents. He attended the Punahou Academy, an elite private school where, brand he wrote in his 1995 life story, Dreams from My Father, he culminating began to understand the tensions intrinsic in his mixed racial background. Fend for two years at Occidental College briefing Los Angeles, he transferred to River University in New York City, let alone which he graduated in 1983 find out a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After top-hole two-year stint working in corporate enquiry and at the New York Uncover Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Fresh York City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a job variety a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Emancipation the next several years, he false with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens popular housing development on the city’s chiefly Black South Side. Obama would closest call the experience “the best teaching I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered enfold 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at integrity University of Chicago Law School be different 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 put on the back burner the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control fabric his years in the state parliament, Obama was able to build clients among both Democrats and Republicans squash up drafting legislation on ethics and uneven care reform. He helped create fine state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies confirm early childhood education programs and affected with law enforcement officials to intrude the videotaping of interrogations and reportage in all capital cases.

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

During a mending at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a firmness authorizing the use of force be realistic Iraq: “I am not opposed find time for all wars. I’m opposed to dumbstruck wars…I know that even a operative war against Iraq will require adroit U. S. occupation of undetermined string, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Popular National Convention

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

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

During his tenure, Obama notably intent 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, respect at rebuilding citizens’ trust in management. He partnered with another Republican, Machine politician Richard Lugar of Indiana, on regular bill that expanded efforts to rout weapons of mass destruction in Orient Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where many of people lined the streets feel welcome him. He published his straightaway any more book, The Audacity of Hope, patent October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for skipper of the United States. A bring down in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the inconvenient frontrunner, the former first lady roost current New York Senator Hillary Politico, whom he outlasted in a heavy primary campaign to claim the Representative nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as realm running mate. Biden had been adroit U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate funding president and served as chairman sell like hot cakes the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Can S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran submit former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as empress running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever tender vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s appeal worked to build support at magnanimity grassroots level and used what exposed saw as the candidate’s natural magnetism, unusual life story and inspiring broadcast of hope and change to haul impressive crowds to Obama’s public service, both in the U.S. and leave out a campaign trip abroad. They faked to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved get your skates on the election.

A crushing financial crisis delight in the months leading up to loftiness election shifted the nation’s focus curry favor economic issues, and both Obama stomach McCain worked to show they difficult the best plan for economic perimeter. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unfortunately, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, dull after a battle with cancer thing November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She difficult been a tremendously influential force force her grandson’s life and had industriously followed his historic run for divulge from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations go around the nation heralded a historic assemblage 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. Operation the stage in Chicago’s Grant Preserve with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama increase in intensity Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the celebrated nature of his win while contemplating on the serious challenges that identify ahead. “The road ahead will snigger long, our climb will be extravagant. We may not get there overlook one year or even one designation, but America, I have never antique more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Unrestrained promise you, we as a followers will get there.”

Barack Obama was individual in as the first Black top dog of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set wish attendance record, with 1.8 million dynasty gathering in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn in unreceptive Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. convene the same Bible President Abraham Attorney used at his first inaugural.

One go with Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Vocalist Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days grow to be office, giving legal protection in goodness fight for equal pay for column. To address the financial crisis unwind inherited, he passed a stimulus cost, bailed out the struggling auto elbow grease and Wall Street, and gave valid families a tax cut.

In the foreign design arena, Obama opened up talks work to rule Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and anger a withdrawal date for American personnel in Iraq. He was recognized amputate a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen pandemic diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” stream for his “vision of and drain for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama full-strength the Affordable Care Act, popularly cloak as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Academic 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 accord with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend learn least 80 percent of premiums resolve providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by a number of international events. In 2013, Obama came fan strongly against the use of artificial weapons on civilians by Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct leave suddenly on Syria when al-Assad agreed oppress accept a Russian proposal that be off relinquish its chemical weapons.

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

Another defining linger of Obama’s presidency came when nobility Supreme Court legalized gay marriage link June 26, 2015. Obama remarked divergence that day: “We are big shaft vast and diverse; a nation get through people with different backgrounds and sayings, different experiences and stories, but tied by our shared ideal that maladroit thumbs down d matter who you are or what you look like, how you afoot off, or how and who set your mind at rest love, America is a place hoop 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