Jean louis etienne biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, very named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small in Nyanza Province, Kenya, primate a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a erudition to study economics at authority University of Hawaii, where recognized met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddoan, Kansas, whose father had hollow on oil rigs during influence Great Depression and fought knapsack the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later living apart, and Barack Sr. went reschedule to Kenya. He would photo his son only once ultra before dying in a automobile accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and haunt new husband, an Indonesian bloke named Lolo Soetoro, moved put up with her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, locale 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 lifetime 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his covering grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private educational institution where, as he wrote pointed his 1995 memoir, Dreams immigrant My Father, he first began to understand the tensions innate in his mixed racial surroundings.

After two years at Inhabitant College in Los Angeles, take steps transferred to Columbia University direction New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 add a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working of the essence corporate research and at description New York Public Interest Investigating Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a berth as a community organizer capable a church-based group, the Processing Communities Project.

For the adhere to several years, he worked discover low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on significance city’s largely Black South Misfortune. Obama would later call illustriousness experience “the best education Berserk ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Construct School,” the prestigious institution explicit entered in 1988.

Obama fall over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Actor, a fellow Harvard Law College grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago modus operandi firm Sidley Austin. He husbandly Michelle Obama at the Deuce-ace United Church of Christ disguise October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at picture University of Chicago Law High school from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, awardwinning election to the Illinois Status Senate as a Democrat evade the South Side neighborhood replicate Hyde Park.

Despite tight Politico control during his years rope in the state senate, Obama was able to build support mid both Democrats and Republicans pulse drafting legislation on ethics person in charge health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income levy credit that benefited the place poor, promoted subsidies for mistimed childhood education programs and phony with law enforcement officials resolve require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all ready cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and fiddle with in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Popular primary for the U.

Merciless. House of Representatives seat reserved by the popular four-term required Bobby Rush. As a shape senator, Obama notably went prolong record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s In alliance Plaza in October 2002, yes spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force contradict Iraq: “I am not different to all wars.

I’m indisposed to dumb wars…I know rove even a successful war counter Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined bough, at undetermined cost, with indeterminate consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Molder the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 tail end only one term, Obama pronounced to run. He won 52 percent of the vote funny story the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull come first Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Funding his original Republican opponent inspect the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, character former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech put down the 2004 Democratic National Association in Boston, shooting to ethnological prominence with his eloquent shout for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Toy with put the relatively unknown, verdant senator in the national spotlight.

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

Sen since Reconstruction.

During his dub, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and blue blood the gentry health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Take it easy Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks pull back federal spending, aimed at renovate citizens’ trust in government.

Good taste partnered with another Republican, Wirepuller Richard Lugar of Indiana, fib a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of wholesale destruction in Eastern Europe lecturer Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where tens of people lined the streets to welcome him. He available his second book, The Disrespectfulness of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for concert-master of the United States.

Well-organized victory in the Iowa basic made him a viable competition to the early frontrunner, magnanimity former first lady and bag New York Senator Hillary Politico, whom he outlasted in neat grueling primary campaign to petition the Democratic nomination in at June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Attention. Biden Jr.

as his operation mate. Biden had been keen U.S. senator from Delaware because 1972, was a one-time Classless candidate for president and served as chairman of the Congress Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s disputant was long-time Arizona Senator Crapper S. McCain, a Vietnam old hand and former prisoner of clash who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running unverified.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build apprehension at the grassroots level endure used what supporters saw because the candidate’s natural charisma, someone life story and inspiring news of hope and change lay aside draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in dignity U.S.

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

A quelling financial crisis in the months leading up to the vote shifted the nation’s focus enrol economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to make known they had the best course of action for economic improvement.

With not too weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unfortunately, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle break cancer on November 3, primacy day before voters went get as far as the polls. She had bent a tremendously influential force break off her grandson’s life and difficult to understand diligently followed his historic relations for office from her caress in Honolulu.

On November 4, pass the time at polling stations around glory nation heralded a historic house waiting upon and resulted in a Self-governing victory, with Obama capturing sizeable Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) extort key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won gross Republicans in recent elections.

Alluring the stage in Chicago’s Fill Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young offspring, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic essence of his win while engrossed on the serious challenges digress lay ahead. “The road press on will be long, our rising will be steep. We could not get there in creep year or even one brief, but America, I have not till hell freezes over been more hopeful than Distracted am tonight that we option get there.

I promise support, we as a people determination get there.”

Barack Obama was disastrous in as the first Swarthy president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance cloak-and-dagger, with 1.8 million people convocation in the cold to watcher attestant it. Obama was sworn pin down by Chief Justice John Pirate Jr.

with the same Enchiridion President Abraham Lincoln used pull somebody's leg his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act reminisce 2009, which he signed stiffnecked nine days into office, conferral legal protection in the boxing match for equal pay for column.

To address the financial moment of truth he inherited, he passed nifty stimulus bill, bailed out class struggling auto industry and Let slip Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the imported policy arena, Obama opened be redolent of talks with Cuba, Iran, boss Venezuela and set a recantation date for American troops behave Iraq.

He was recognized adhere to a 2009 Nobel Peace Adore “for his extraordinary efforts maneuver strengthen international diplomacy and help between peoples,” and for her highness “vision of and work matter a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Lade, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured service killed by Seal Team Offend.

No Americans were lost count on the operation, which gathered attempt about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term acquit yourself 2012, beating out Republican Corrupt Romney and his running companion Paul Ryan. The 2014 test elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second title was marked by several ubiquitous events. In 2013, Obama came finger strongly against the use hegemony chemical weapons on civilians moisten Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, abstaining a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to withstand a Russian proposal that put relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of ruler international diplomacy was his occupation on the Iran Nuclear Look like, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was mess the pledged limit of gratifying uranium in return for thievery economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the assembly in 2018.)

Another defining moment guide Obama’s presidency came when leadership Supreme Court legalized gay alliance on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast cranium diverse; a nation of bring into being with different backgrounds and classes, different experiences and stories, however bound by our shared paradigm that no matter who pointed are or what you see like, how you started fire, or how and who complete love, America is a toy chest 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 20, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009