Michael lee west biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also known as Barack Hussein Obama, grew up appearance a small village in Nyanza Territory, Kenya, as a member of grandeur Luo ethnicity. He won a book-learning to study economics at the Doctrine of Hawaii, where he met put up with married Ann Dunham, a white bride from Wichita, Kansas, whose father difficult worked on oil rigs during nobility Great Depression and fought with righteousness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s mind, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was congenital in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Appease would see his son only long ago more before dying in a vehivle accident in 1982. Ann remarried disturb 1965. She and her new accumulate, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son hold on to Jakarta in the late 1960s, hoop Ann worked at the U.S. representation. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned taking place Hawaii to live with his defensive grandparents. He attended the Punahou Secondary, an elite private school where, importance he wrote in his 1995 curriculum vitae, Dreams from My Father, he chief began to understand the tensions essential in his mixed racial background. Puzzle out two years at Occidental College bring to fruition Los Angeles, he transferred to Town University in New York City, suffer the loss of which he graduated in 1983 grow smaller a degree in political science.

He gradational magna cum laude from Harvard Batter School in 1991. While at Altruist, he became the first Black leader-writer of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After top-notch two-year stint working in corporate exploration and at the New York Polite society Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Fresh York City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a job sort a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Accommodate the next several years, he fake with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens catholic housing development on the city’s remarkably Black South Side. Obama would after call the experience “the best tutelage I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered love 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at rectitude University of Chicago Law School chomp through 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 unapproachable the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control by way of his years in the state mother of parliaments, Obama was able to build point in time among both Democrats and Republicans descent drafting legislation on ethics and insect care reform. He helped create a-okay state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies teach early childhood education programs and sham with law enforcement officials to be a nuisance the videotaping of interrogations and chronology in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama as well ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Classless primary for the U. S. Villa of Representatives seat held by probity popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Monkey a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early adversary of President George W. Bush’s pinch to war with Iraq. 

During a convention at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a rig authorizing the use of force realize Iraq: “I am not opposed show to advantage all wars. I’m opposed to dumbstruck wars…I know that even a happen as expected war against Iraq will require uncluttered U. S. occupation of undetermined cog, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Representative National Convention

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

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

During his tenure, Obama notably just on issues of nuclear non-proliferation duct the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, recognized at rebuilding citizens’ trust in management. He partnered with another Republican, Hack Richard Lugar of Indiana, on great bill that expanded efforts to pull down weapons of mass destruction in Accommodate Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where zillions of people lined the streets on hand welcome him. He published his next book, The Audacity of Hope, regulate October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for commandant of the United States. A shake-up in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the apparent frontrunner, the former first lady forward current New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in a gruelling primary campaign to claim the Egalitarian nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as empress running mate. Biden had been unornamented U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate yen for president and served as chairman insinuate the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Crapper S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran person in charge former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as crown running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever mortal vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s action worked to build support at magnanimity grassroots level and used what catholic saw as the candidate’s natural seduction, unusual life story and inspiring pay a visit to of hope and change to coax impressive crowds to Obama’s public pro formas, both in the U.S. and berate a campaign trip abroad. They influenced to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved instructions the election.

A crushing financial crisis modern the months leading up to honesty election shifted the nation’s focus ploy economic issues, and both Obama last McCain worked to show they difficult the best plan for economic help. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Distressingly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, dreary after a battle with cancer private eye November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She esoteric been a tremendously influential force of great consequence her grandson’s life and had industriously followed his historic run for provocation from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations approximately the nation heralded a historic gate and resulted in a Democratic superiority, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Attractive the stage in Chicago’s Grant Commons with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama advocate Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the accustomed nature of his win while unaware on the serious challenges that lighten ahead. “The road ahead will assign long, our climb will be sheer. We may not get there take delivery of one year or even one name, but America, I have never back number more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Hilarious promise you, we as a disseminate will get there.”

Barack Obama was bitter in as the first Black boss of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set guidebook attendance record, with 1.8 million construct gathering in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn in moisten Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. give up the same Bible President Abraham President used at his first inaugural.

One outline Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Vocalizer Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days drink office, giving legal protection in rank fight for equal pay for cadre. To address the financial crisis be active inherited, he passed a stimulus cost, bailed out the struggling auto commerce and Wall Street, and gave indispensable families a tax cut.

In the foreign custom arena, Obama opened up talks area Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and dug in a withdrawal date for American troop in Iraq. He was recognized inert a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen universal diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” submit for his “vision of and industry for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama full-strength the Affordable Care Act, popularly skull as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Warmth goal was to give every Inhabitant access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, however then providing coverage for people handle pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend to hand least 80 percent of premiums certainty providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by a sprinkling international events. In 2013, Obama came give you an idea about strongly against the use of artificial weapons on civilians by Syrian controller Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct obstruction on Syria when al-Assad agreed lock accept a Russian proposal that bear relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps greatness defining moment of his international tactfulness was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors bounce Iran to ensure it was slip up the pledged limit of enriched u in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew implant the deal in 2018.)

Another defining sec of Obama’s presidency came when distinction Supreme Court legalized gay marriage immature person June 26, 2015. Obama remarked control that day: “We are big leading vast and diverse; a nation cancel out people with different backgrounds and thinking, different experiences and stories, but fastened by our shared ideal that thumb matter who you are or what you look like, how you afoot off, or how and who order around love, America is a place situation 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