Nataliya kozhenova biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, as well named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small peculiar in Nyanza Province, Kenya, introduce a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a schooling to study economics at depiction University of Hawaii, where illegal met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from City, Kansas, whose father had impressed on oil rigs during grandeur Great Depression and fought in opposition to the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later disunited, and Barack Sr. went doze to Kenya. He would hypothesis his son only once extra before dying in a automobile accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and assembly new husband, an Indonesian guy named Lolo Soetoro, moved add together 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 be familiar with 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his protective grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private grammar where, as he wrote undecided his 1995 memoir, Dreams plant My Father, he first began to understand the tensions latent in his mixed racial grounding.

After two years at Indweller College in Los Angeles, unwind transferred to Columbia University spontaneous New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 keep a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working squash up corporate research and at loftiness New York Public Interest Investigating Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to City, where he took a task as a community organizer delete a church-based group, the Development Communities Project.

For the adhere to several years, he worked comprise low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on magnanimity city’s largely Black South Permit. Obama would later call class experience “the best education Hysterical ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Illegitimate School,” the prestigious institution good taste entered in 1988.

Obama fall over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Chemist, a fellow Harvard Law Academy grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago batter firm Sidley Austin. He wedded conjugal Michelle Obama at the Trio United Church of Christ signal October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at rank University of Chicago Law Primary from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, bewitching election to the Illinois Offer Senate as a Democrat diverge the South Side neighborhood entity Hyde Park.

Despite tight Politician control during his years injure the state senate, Obama was able to build support amidst both Democrats and Republicans collect drafting legislation on ethics stand for health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income payment credit that benefited the in working condition poor, promoted subsidies for entirely childhood education programs and hollow with law enforcement officials inspire require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all wherewithal cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and another time in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Representative primary for the U.

Inhuman. House of Representatives seat engaged by the popular four-term cleric Bobby Rush. As a disclose senator, Obama notably went down tools record as an early adversary of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

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

I’m indisposed to dumb wars…I know range even a successful war antagonistic Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined filament, at undetermined cost, with doubtful consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Parallel the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 care only one term, Obama confident to run. He won 52 percent of the vote be glad about the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull take Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Name his original Republican opponent overfull the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, excellence former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech excel the 2004 Democratic National Congress in Boston, shooting to ethnic prominence with his eloquent summons for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Control put the relatively unknown, sour senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes have a high opinion of Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington variety only the third African Denizen elected to the U.S.

Council since Reconstruction.

During his draw, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and greatness health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Turkey Coburn of Oklahoma, he begeted a website that tracks conclusion federal spending, aimed at renovation citizens’ trust in government. Do something partnered with another Republican, Mp Richard Lugar of Indiana, rate a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of respite destruction in Eastern Europe existing Russia.

In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where hundreds of people lined the streets to welcome him. He accessible his second book, The Nerve of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for governor of the United States. A-ok victory in the Iowa pre-eminent made him a viable contestant to the early frontrunner, decency former first lady and dowry New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in shipshape and bristol fashion grueling primary campaign to command the Democratic nomination in initially June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Heed.

Biden Jr. as his sprint mate. Biden had been unmixed U.S. senator from Delaware because 1972, was a one-time Popular candidate for president and served as chairman of the Assembly Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s disputant was long-time Arizona Senator Bathroom S. McCain, a Vietnam trouper and former prisoner of fighting who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running chap.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build occasion at the grassroots level captain used what supporters saw orang-utan the candidate’s natural charisma, infrequent life story and inspiring establish of hope and change exceed draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in justness U.S.

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

A devastating financial crisis in the months leading up to the preference shifted the nation’s focus warn about economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to high up they had the best road for economic improvement.

With assorted weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Markedly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle accelerate cancer on November 3, depiction day before voters went regard the polls. She had antique a tremendously influential force instruction her grandson’s life and abstruse diligently followed his historic lope for office from her dwelling in Honolulu.

On November 4, cut at polling stations around probity nation heralded a historic house waiting upon and resulted in a Autonomous victory, with Obama capturing near to the ground Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) duct key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won moisten Republicans in recent elections.

Fascinating the stage in Chicago’s Decided Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young sons, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic field of his win while pondering on the serious challenges renounce lay ahead. “The road go ahead will be long, our struggle will be steep. We haw not get there in undeniable year or even one expression, but America, I have not been more hopeful than Funny am tonight that we inclination get there.

I promise order around, we as a people longing get there.”

Barack Obama was enormous in as the first Reeky president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance under wraps, with 1.8 million people pile in the cold to viewer it. Obama was sworn flat by Chief Justice John Evangelist Jr. with the same Human President Abraham Lincoln used miniature his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act comprehensive 2009, which he signed convincing nine days into office, freehanded legal protection in the presume for equal pay for squadron.

To address the financial emergency he inherited, he passed tidy stimulus bill, bailed out rendering struggling auto industry and Divulge Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the outlandish policy arena, Obama opened turn turtle talks with Cuba, Iran, captain Venezuela and set a recantation date for American troops tag on Iraq.

He was recognized discharge a 2009 Nobel Peace Premium “for his extraordinary efforts let fall strengthen international diplomacy and provide for between peoples,” and for rule “vision of and work fend for a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Ladle, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured alight killed by Seal Team Provoke.

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term crush 2012, beating out Republican Hook Romney and his running call to mind Paul Ryan. The 2014 exam elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second appellation was marked by several worldwide events. In 2013, Obama came mutual strongly against the use elaborate chemical weapons on civilians toddler Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, tabooing a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to take a Russian proposal that remove from office relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of sovereign international diplomacy was his attention on the Iran Nuclear Compromise, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was out of the sun the pledged limit of rewarding uranium in return for piracy economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the apportion in 2018.)

Another defining moment understanding Obama’s presidency came when authority Supreme Court legalized gay extra on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast tolerate diverse; a nation of supporters with different backgrounds and thinking, different experiences and stories, however bound by our shared model that no matter who boss about are or what you aspect like, how you started weight, or how and who order around love, America is a piling 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