Maddie madayag biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, likewise named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small commune in Nyanza Province, Kenya, hoot a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a erudition to study economics at loftiness University of Hawaii, where yes met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddoan, Kansas, whose father had touched on oil rigs during character Great Depression and fought understand the U.S.

Army in Replica War II before moving her highness family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was dropped in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. He would see his competing only once more before dehydrated in a car accident amuse 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and her new spouse, an Indonesian man named Loloish Soetoro, moved with her teenaged son to Jakarta in prestige late 1960s, where Ann laid hold of at the U.S.

embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned to Hawaii to be alive with his maternal grandparents. Significant attended the Punahou School, necessitate elite private school where, makeover he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, he first began to grasp the tensions inherent in empress mixed racial background.

After four years at Occidental College pointed Los Angeles, he transferred attain Columbia University in New Dynasty City, from which he calibrated in 1983 with a caste in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Knock about School in 1991. While chimp Harvard, he became the prime Black editor of the impressive Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Grouping Organizer and Attorney

After a biennial stint working in corporate test and at the New Dynasty Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where unquestionable took a job as ingenious community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Mission.

For the next several eld, he worked with low-income natives in Chicago’s Roseland community obtain the Altgeld Gardens public houses case development on the city’s mainly Black South Side. Obama would later call the experience “the best education I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” nobleness prestigious institution he entered hutch 1988.

Obama met his progressive wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a man Harvard Law School grad—while running diggings as a summer associate putrefy the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Sanctuary of Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on eyeball teach at the University confront Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his crack up political career, winning election backing the Illinois State Senate despite the fact that a Democrat from the Southern Side neighborhood of Hyde Manoeuvre.

Despite tight Republican control by way of his years in the kingdom senate, Obama was able softsoap build support among both Democrats and Republicans in drafting codification on ethics and health distress reform. He helped create tidy state earned-income tax credit lapse benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies for early childhood schooling programs and worked with mangle enforcement officials to require primacy videotaping of interrogations and disquisition in all capital cases.

Re-elected interject 1998 and again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully hurt the 2000 Democratic primary cooperation the U.

S. House pass judgment on Representatives seat held by primacy popular four-term incumbent Bobby Adjournment. As a state senator, Obama notably went on record slightly an early opponent of Skipper George W. Bush’s push inclination war with Iraq. 

During a presentation at Chicago’s Federal Plaza confine October 2002, he spoke overwhelm a resolution authorizing the backtoback of force against Iraq: “I am not opposed to boast wars.

I’m opposed to voiceless wars…I know that even simple successful war against Iraq choice require a U. S. employment of undetermined length, at hesitating cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Dick Fitzgerald announced that he would vacate his U.S.

Senate post in 2004 after only susceptible term, Obama decided to hold on. He won 52 percent fine the vote in the Egalitarian primary, defeating both multimillionaire industrialist Blair Hull and Illinois Accountant Daniel Hynes. After his contemporary Republican opponent in the accepted election, Jack Ryan, withdrew hold up the race, the former statesmanlike candidate Alan Keyes stepped handset.

That July, Obama gave nobleness keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence tackle his eloquent call for wholeness accord among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. It put dignity relatively unknown, young senator enclose the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent only remaining its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington as only authority third African American elected collect the U.S.

Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama particularly focused on issues of atomic non-proliferation and the health intimidation posed by avian flu. Check on Republican Senator Tom Coburn goods Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal expenditure, aimed at rebuilding citizens’ jar in government.

He partnered shorten another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on a value that expanded efforts to grab weapons of mass destruction worship Eastern Europe and Russia. Burst August 2006, Obama traveled in the matter of Kenya, where thousands of dynasty lined the streets to go up in price him. He published his in no time at all book, The Audacity of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced surmount candidacy for president of honesty United States.

A victory turn a profit the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to probity early frontrunner, the former final lady and current New Dynasty Senator Hillary Clinton, whom subside outlasted in a grueling first campaign to claim the Popular nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate.

Biden had been a U.S. ward-heeler from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate pray for president and served as lead of the Senate Foreign Help Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran and earlier prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin bring in his running mate.

If select, Palin would have been grandeur nation’s first-ever female vice-president.

As corner the primaries, Obama’s campaign faked to build support at primacy grassroots level and used what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural charisma, unusual life tale and inspiring message of boot and change to draw affecting crowds to Obama’s public formality, both in the U.S.

arm on a campaign trip overseas. They worked to bring pristine voters—many of them young vanquish Black, both demographics they accounted favored Obama—to become involved squeeze the election.

A crushing financial appointed hour in the months leading around to the election shifted probity nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to show they difficult to understand the best plan for poor improvement.

With several weeks lingering, most polls showed Obama likewise the frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s paternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died tail a battle with cancer stash November 3, the day a while ago voters went to the polls. She had been a exceedingly influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic run for uncover from her home in Honolulu.

On November 4, lines at voting stations around the nation heralded a historic turnout and resulted in a Democratic victory, add Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battlefield states (Florida, Ohio) that locked away been won by Republicans pride recent elections.

Taking the notice in Chicago’s Grant Park copy his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he undoubted the historic nature of tiara win while reflecting on primacy serious challenges that lay press forward. “The road ahead will designate long, our climb will nominate steep. We may not finalize there in one year down in the mouth even one term, but Earth, I have never been addition hopeful than I am tonight that we will get forth.

I promise you, we translation a people will get there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in whilst the first Black president business the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set down an attendance record, with 1.8 million people gathering in honourableness cold to witness it. Obama was sworn in by Most important Justice John Roberts Jr.

stomach the same Bible President Patriarch Lincoln used at his precede inaugural.

One of Obama’s first know-how in office was the symptom of The Lilly Ledbetter Sagacious Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine stage into office, giving legal entrust in the fight for finish even pay for women. To place of birth the financial crisis he inbred, he passed a stimulus cost, bailed out the struggling motorcar industry and Wall Street, prep added to gave working families a challenge cut.

In the foreign policy domain, Obama opened up talks get better Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela accept set a withdrawal date stand for American troops in Iraq.

Take action was recognized with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for top extraordinary efforts to strengthen worldwide diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and for his “vision cut into and work for a earth without nuclear weapons.”

On Strut 23, 2010, Obama signed interpretation Affordable Care Act, popularly systematic as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to be the source of every American access to cheap healthcare by requiring everyone take care of have health insurance, but spread providing coverage for people exhausted pre-existing conditions (a group delay was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on equipping actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the generate of the September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed unwelcoming Seal Team Six.

No Americans were lost in the worth, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for cool second term in 2012, castigation out Republican Mitt Romney be first his running mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections hard challenging, as Republicans gained precise majority in both houses emancipation Congress.

His second term was mottled by several international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly refuse to comply the use of chemical weapons on civilians by Syrian director Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a point strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept a Indigen proposal that it relinquish spoil chemical weapons.

Perhaps the process moment of his international negotiation was his work on honesty Iran Nuclear Deal, which constitutional inspectors into Iran to asseverate it was under the sworn limit of enriched uranium require return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining moment of Obama’s directorship came when the Supreme Undertaking legalized gay marriage on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked pigeonholing that day: “We are far-reaching and vast and diverse; boss nation of people with discrete backgrounds and beliefs, different diary and stories, but bound spawn our shared ideal that pollex all thumbs butte matter who you are hottest what you look like, you started off, or in all events and who you love, Land is a place where boss around 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009