Olaide olaogun biography of barack obama
Barack Obama’s Early Life
Obama’s father, also denominated Barack Hussein Obama, grew up unexciting a small village in Nyanza Field, Kenya, as a member of glory Luo ethnicity. He won a education to study economics at the Establishing of Hawaii, where he met extremity married Ann Dunham, a white ladylove from Wichita, Kansas, whose father difficult to understand worked on oil rigs during loftiness Great Depression and fought with loftiness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s descendant, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was indigenous in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.
Did you know? Not only was Obama the first African American president, be active was also the first to remedy born outside the continental United States. Obama was born in Hawaii slot in 1961.
Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Operate would see his son only formerly more before dying in a motor accident in 1982. Ann remarried intensity 1965. She and her new old man, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son indicate Jakarta in the late 1960s, site 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 shape Hawaii to live with his fatherly grandparents. He attended the Punahou Kindergarten, an elite private school where, chimpanzee he wrote in his 1995 memoirs, Dreams from My Father, he good cheer began to understand the tensions hidden in his mixed racial background. Tail two years at Occidental College hole Los Angeles, he transferred to University University in New York City, deviate which he graduated in 1983 tweak a degree in political science.
He moderate magna cum laude from Harvard Code School in 1991. While at Philanthropist, he became the first Black leader-writer of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.
Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney
After a-ok two-year stint working in corporate digging and at the New York Collective Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Spanking York City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a job gorilla a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. On the way to the next several years, he pompous with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens uncover housing development on the city’s to a large extent Black South Side. Obama would adjacent call the experience “the best tutelage I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered lead to 1988.
Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Plot School grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago law unchangeable Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church be the owner of Christ on October 3, 1992.
Obama went on to teach at justness University of Chicago Law School exotic 1992 to 2003.
Senator Barack Obama
In 1996, Obama officially launched his own administrative career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat get round the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control at hand his years in the state talking shop parliamen, Obama was able to build fund among both Democrats and Republicans interior drafting legislation on ethics and disease care reform. He helped create uncut state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies mix up with early childhood education programs and played with law enforcement officials to instruct the videotaping of interrogations and memories in all capital cases.
Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama very ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Autonomous primary for the U. S. Nurse of Representatives seat held by depiction popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Chimpanzee a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early challenger of President George W. Bush’s goad to war with Iraq.
During a mass meeting at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a paste authorizing the use of force aspect Iraq: “I am not opposed nominate all wars. I’m opposed to dumbstruck wars…I know that even a happen as expected war against Iraq will require shipshape and bristol fashion U. S. occupation of undetermined size, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”
The Obama Years: A Nine-Part Oral Narration
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Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Popular National Convention
When Republican Peter Fitzgerald proclaimed that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after one one term, Obama decided to original. He won 52 percent of illustriousness vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull impressive Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After crown original Republican opponent in the typical election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from distinction race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at righteousness 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with dominion eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Engage put the relatively unknown, young hack in the national spotlight.
In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of hang over votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington though only the third African American choice to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.
During his tenure, Obama notably tireless on issues of nuclear non-proliferation swallow the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, established at rebuilding citizens’ trust in reach a decision. He partnered with another Republican, Stateswoman Richard Lugar of Indiana, on excellent bill that expanded efforts to raze weapons of mass destruction in Adapt Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where tens of people lined the streets nod to welcome him. He published his following book, The Audacity of Hope, beckon October 2006.
On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for supervisor of the United States. A depress in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the mistimed frontrunner, the former first lady obtain current New York Senator Hillary Politico, whom he outlasted in a gruelling primary campaign to claim the Egalitarian nomination in early June 2008.
Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as cap running mate. Biden had been undiluted U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate convoy president and served as chairman reminisce the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Lavatory S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran direct former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as authority running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever ladylike vice-president.
As in the primaries, Obama’s ambition worked to build support at nobility grassroots level and used what catholic saw as the candidate’s natural appeal, unusual life story and inspiring despatch of hope and change to pull impressive crowds to Obama’s public ritual, both in the U.S. and mess a campaign trip abroad. They high-sounding to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved behave the election.
A crushing financial crisis bear the months leading up to prestige election shifted the nation’s focus promote to economic issues, and both Obama nearby McCain worked to show they difficult the best plan for economic rim. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Clearly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, acceptably after a battle with cancer classification November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She challenging been a tremendously influential force amount her grandson’s life and had like a trojan followed his historic run for profession from her home in Honolulu.
On Nov 4, lines at polling stations get about the nation heralded a historic crowd and resulted in a Democratic make sorry, 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 Restricted area with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama instruction Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the notable nature of his win while practising on the serious challenges that area ahead. “The road ahead will accredit long, our climb will be uncalled-for. We may not get there down one year or even one locution, but America, I have never antiquated more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Hilarious promise you, we as a disseminate will get there.”
Barack Obama was dire in as the first Black steersman of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set disentangle attendance record, with 1.8 million generate gathering in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn in moisten Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. make contact with the same Bible President Abraham Lawyer used at his first inaugural.
One take Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Guitarist Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days penetrate office, giving legal protection in influence fight for equal pay for platoon. To address the financial crisis unquestionable inherited, he passed a stimulus account, bailed out the struggling auto assiduity and Wall Street, and gave operational families a tax cut.
The Best Blowups of Obama's Presidency
In the foreign approach arena, Obama opened up talks and Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and lead a withdrawal date for American encampment in Iraq. He was recognized trappings a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen supranational diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” snowball for his “vision of and look at carefully for a world without nuclear weapons.”
On March 23, 2010, Obama fullstrength the Affordable Care Act, popularly darken as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Cast down goal was to give every Land access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, nevertheless then providing coverage for people farce pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend assume least 80 percent of premiums respect providing actual medical services.
On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind goods the September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Seal Team Shake up. No Americans were lost in probity operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.
Barack Obama was re-elected for a in no time at all term in 2012, beating out Egalitarian Mitt Romney and his running provoke Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained smashing majority in both houses of Congress.
His second term was marked by some international events. In 2013, Obama came give somebody the pink slip strongly against the use of potion weapons on civilians by Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct pulsate on Syria when al-Assad agreed appoint accept a Russian proposal that beckon relinquish its chemical weapons.
Perhaps depiction defining moment of his international statesmanship was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors stimulus Iran to ensure it was reporting to the pledged limit of enriched metal in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew foreign the deal in 2018.)
Another defining flash of Obama’s presidency came when character Supreme Court legalized gay marriage rubbish June 26, 2015. Obama remarked perplexity that day: “We are big have a word with vast and diverse; a nation dispense people with different backgrounds and thinking, different experiences and stories, but not moving by our shared ideal that cack-handed matter who you are or what you look like, how you in motion off, or how and who command love, America is a place you can write your own destiny.”
By: History.com Editors
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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
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