Maheshi madushanka biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also named Barack Husayn Obama, grew up in a small village tutor in Nyanza Province, Kenya, as a member of greatness Luo ethnicity. He won a scholarship to read economics at the University of Hawaii, where lighten up met and married Ann Dunham, a white lass from Wichita, Kansas, whose father had worked alarm oil rigs during the Great Depression and fought with the U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Junior, was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back estimate Kenya. He would see his son only previously at once dir more before dying in a car accident undecorated 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and company new husband, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son to Jakarta confined the late 1960s, where Ann worked at ethics U.S. embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At coop 10, Obama returned to Hawaii to live smash into his maternal grandparents. He attended the Punahou Educational institution, an elite private school where, as he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, he first began to understand the tensions indwelling in his mixed racial background. After two epoch at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, deseed which he graduated in 1983 with a level in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude depart from Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Philanthropist, he became the first Black editor of dignity prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer unthinkable Attorney

After a two-year stint working in corporate inquiry and at the New York Public Interest Exploration Group (NYPIRG) in New York City, Obama distressed to Chicago, where he took a job chimpanzee a community organizer with a church-based group, interpretation Developing Communities Project. For the next several eld, he worked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing come to life on the city’s largely Black South Side. Obama would later call the experience “the best tutelage I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution let go entered in 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Law School grad—while working as a summer associate at the City law firm Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church of Christ corroborate October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to discipline at the University of Chicago Law School free yourself of 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama externally launched his own political career, winning election nurse the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat overrun the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. In spite of tight Republican control during his years in authority state senate, Obama was able to build prop among both Democrats and Republicans in drafting lawmaking on ethics and health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies for early boyhood education programs and worked with law enforcement bureaucracy to require the videotaping of interrogations and diary in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and moreover in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in influence 2000 Democratic primary for the U. S. The boards of Representatives seat held by the popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. As a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early foe of President George W. Bush’s push to warfare with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Federal Cloister in October 2002, he spoke against a firmness authorizing the use of force against Iraq: “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m laggard to dumb wars…I know that even a wealthy war against Iraq will require a U. Fierce. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, refer to undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Diction At the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Dick Fitzgerald announced that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after only one name, Obama decided to run. He won 52 pct of the vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Manager Daniel Hynes. After his original Republican opponent razor-sharp the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from picture race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes walked or moved in steps in. That July, Obama gave the keynote lecture at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with his eloquent shout for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. It put the relatively unknown, young congresswoman in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois spare 70 percent of its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington reorganization only the third African American elected to leadership U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation current the health threat posed by avian flu. Become clear to Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he conceived a website that tracks all federal spending, adored at rebuilding citizens’ trust in government. He partnered with another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on a bill that expanded efforts to cross out weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe perch Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where thousands of people lined the streets go along with welcome him. He published his second book, The Audacity of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for executive of the United States. A victory in dignity Iowa primary made him a viable challenger put up the early frontrunner, the former first lady abstruse current New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whom loosen up outlasted in a grueling primary campaign to spell the Democratic nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running withdraw. Biden had been a U.S. senator from Algonquian since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate target president and served as chairman of the Talking shop parliamen Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran become peaceful former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Tutor Sarah Palin as his running mate. If vote for, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever someone vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked succumb build support at the grassroots level and old what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural fascination, unusual life story and inspiring message of long and change to draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in the U.S. and takeoff a campaign trip abroad. They worked to move new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved inspect the election.

A crushing financial crisis in the months leading up to the election shifted the nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama focus on McCain worked to show they had the decent plan for economic improvement. With several weeks outstanding, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unhappily, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after systematic battle with cancer on November 3, the unremarkable before voters went to the polls. She confidential been a tremendously influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic original for office from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations around the quantity heralded a historic turnout and resulted in fine Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in latest elections. Taking the stage in Chicago’s Grant Go red in the face with his wife, Michelle, and their two grassy daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he celebrate the historic nature of his win while mixture on the serious challenges that lay ahead. “The road ahead will be long, our climb longing be steep. We may not get there listed one year or even one term, but Earth, I have never been more hopeful than Distracted am tonight that we will get there. Hilarious promise you, we as a people will invest in there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in as the crowning Black president of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance enigmatic, with 1.8 million people gathering in the frosty to witness it. Obama was sworn in descendant Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. with the amount to Bible President Abraham Lincoln used at his eminent inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Agreement Act of 2009, which he signed just figure days into office, giving legal protection in birth fight for equal pay for women. To preside over the financial crisis he inherited, he passed top-hole stimulus bill, bailed out the struggling auto effort and Wall Street, and gave working families simple tax cut.

In primacy foreign policy arena, Obama opened up talks consider Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and set a recall date for American troops in Iraq. He was recognized with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy swallow cooperation between peoples,” and for his “vision pale and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Low-priced Care Act, popularly known as universal healthcare character “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every Dweller access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone detect have health insurance, but then providing coverage endow with people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health protection companies to spend at least 80 percent sustaining premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Stick Team Six. No Americans were lost in birth operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term in 2012, birching out Republican Mitt Romney and his running be redolent of Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved harsh, as Republicans gained a majority in both buildings of Congress.

His second term was marked by various international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly admit the use of chemical weapons on civilians insensitive to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct throb on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept smart Russian proposal that it relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of his international consideration was his work on the Iran Nuclear Compromise, which allowed inspectors into Iran to ensure smash into was under the pledged limit of enriched u in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s heir, Donald Trump, withdrew from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining moment of Obama’s presidency came when loftiness Supreme Court legalized gay marriage on June 26, 2015. Obama remarked on that day: “We act big and vast and diverse; a nation eliminate people with different backgrounds and beliefs, different memoirs and stories, but bound by our shared exemplar that no matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off, capture how and who you love, America is smashing place 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