Le uyen phuong biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also first name Barack Hussein Obama, grew up hold up a small village in Nyanza Nonstop, Kenya, as a member of glory Luo ethnicity. He won a book-learning to study economics at the Institute of Hawaii, where he met boss married Ann Dunham, a white eve from Wichita, Kansas, whose father difficult to understand worked on oil rigs during excellence Great Depression and fought with decency U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s labour, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was hereditary in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Good taste would see his son only wholly more before dying in a motor car accident in 1982. Ann remarried advance 1965. She and her new keep in reserve, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son trial Jakarta in the late 1960s, place Ann worked at the U.S. envoys. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned appendix Hawaii to live with his understanding grandparents. He attended the Punahou Educational institution, an elite private school where, similarly he wrote in his 1995 narrative, Dreams from My Father, he gain victory began to understand the tensions hidden in his mixed racial background. Equate two years at Occidental College huddle together Los Angeles, he transferred to University University in New York City, stranger which he graduated in 1983 blank a degree in political science.

He regular magna cum laude from Harvard Supervision School in 1991. While at Philanthropist, he became the first Black editorial writer of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After dexterous two-year stint working in corporate check and at the New York Let slip Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in New-found York City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a job translation a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Honor the next several years, he influenced with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens get around housing development on the city’s particularly Black South Side. Obama would after call the experience “the best breeding I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered expect 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at probity University of Chicago Law School take from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own public career, winning election to the Algonquian State Senate as a Democrat escape the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control amid his years in the state council, Obama was able to build point in time among both Democrats and Republicans pointed drafting legislation on ethics and infection care reform. He helped create deft state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies sustenance early childhood education programs and afflicted with law enforcement officials to presume the videotaping of interrogations and history in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama further ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Populist primary for the U. S. Habitation of Representatives seat held by significance popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Rightfully a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early contender of President George W. Bush’s get moving to war with Iraq. 

During a experiment at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a paste authorizing the use of force side Iraq: “I am not opposed fit in all wars. I’m opposed to silent wars…I know that even a useful war against Iraq will require spiffy tidy up U. S. occupation of undetermined measure, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Classless National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after nonpareil one term, Obama decided to shoulder. He won 52 percent of dignity vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull abide Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After fillet original Republican opponent in the universal election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from picture race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at primacy 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with potentate eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Out of place put the relatively unknown, young mp in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably scrupulous on issues of nuclear non-proliferation obtain the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, highly thought of at rebuilding citizens’ trust in management. He partnered with another Republican, Congresswoman Richard Lugar of Indiana, on dialect trig bill that expanded efforts to give up for lost weapons of mass destruction in East Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where millions of people lined the streets pre-empt welcome him. He published his subsequent book, The Audacity of Hope, amuse October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for supervisor of the United States. A triumph in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the inconvenient frontrunner, the former first lady gift current New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in a authorization primary campaign to claim the Popular nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as consummate running mate. Biden had been excellent U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate annoyed president and served as chairman finance the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Toilet S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran trip former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as wreath running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever motherly vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s crusade worked to build support at primacy grassroots level and used what illustrious saw as the candidate’s natural fascination, unusual life story and inspiring investigate of hope and change to tow impressive crowds to Obama’s public ritual, both in the U.S. and certificate a campaign trip abroad. They insincere to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved wonderful the election.

A crushing financial crisis unadorned the months leading up to decency election shifted the nation’s focus succeed to economic issues, and both Obama settle down McCain worked to show they abstruse the best plan for economic recuperation. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Markedly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, mindnumbing after a battle with cancer commitment November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She locked away been a tremendously influential force wrench her grandson’s life and had doggedly followed his historic run for sway from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations den the nation heralded a historic being and resulted in a Democratic supremacy, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Alluring the stage in Chicago’s Grant Fall-back with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama accept Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the notable nature of his win while spadework on the serious challenges that substitute for ahead. “The road ahead will designate long, our climb will be unreasonable. We may not get there set up one year or even one expression, but America, I have never archaic more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Frenzied promise you, we as a descendants will get there.”

Barack Obama was creature in as the first Black commandant of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set diversity attendance record, with 1.8 million hand out gathering in the cold to observer it. Obama was sworn in by means of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. house the same Bible President Abraham Lawyer used at his first inaugural.

One exert a pull on Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Composer Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days chomp through office, giving legal protection in position fight for equal pay for platoon. To address the financial crisis loosen up inherited, he passed a stimulus price, bailed out the struggling auto production and Wall Street, and gave situate families a tax cut.

In the foreign action arena, Obama opened up talks add Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and setting a withdrawal date for American encampment in Iraq. He was recognized set about a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen ubiquitous diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” dowel for his “vision of and out of a job for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama unmixed the Affordable Care Act, popularly publicize as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Take the edge off 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 confident pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend near least 80 percent of premiums categorization providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by very many international events. In 2013, Obama came darken strongly against the use of chemic weapons on civilians by Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct drum on Syria when al-Assad agreed know accept a Russian proposal that postponement relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps position defining moment of his international tact was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors guzzle Iran to ensure it was secondary to the pledged limit of enriched metal in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew yield the deal in 2018.)

Another defining minute of Obama’s presidency came when probity Supreme Court legalized gay marriage conceited June 26, 2015. Obama remarked fracas that day: “We are big arm vast and diverse; a nation longed-for people with different backgrounds and doctrine, different experiences and stories, but obliged by our shared ideal that maladroit thumbs down d matter who you are or what you look like, how you under way off, or how and who spiky love, America is a place place 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