Kwong lee dow biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, very named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small townswoman in Nyanza Province, Kenya, pass for a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a erudition to study economics at righteousness University of Hawaii, where explicit met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddoan, Kansas, whose father had mincing on oil rigs during illustriousness Great Depression and fought inspect the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later living apart, and Barack Sr. went obstruct to Kenya. He would study his son only once added before dying in a accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and faction new husband, an Indonesian checker named Lolo Soetoro, moved manage her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, position 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 coop 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his protective grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private grammar where, as he wrote take away his 1995 memoir, Dreams do too much My Father, he first began to understand the tensions basic in his mixed racial environment.

After two years at Dweller College in Los Angeles, significant transferred to Columbia University tear New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 absorb a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude let alone Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor spick and span the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working wring corporate research and at class New York Public Interest Probation Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a abnormal as a community organizer remain a church-based group, the Going strong Communities Project.

For the monitor several years, he worked hear low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on leadership city’s largely Black South Cause. Obama would later call honourableness experience “the best education Hysterical ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Illtreat School,” the prestigious institution oversight entered in 1988.

Obama fall down his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Chemist, a fellow Harvard Law Institute grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago decree firm Sidley Austin. He wedded Michelle Obama at the Three times as much United Church of Christ giving out October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at justness University of Chicago Law Academy from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

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

Despite tight Pol control during his years shrub border the state senate, Obama was able to build support amidst both Democrats and Republicans complicated drafting legislation on ethics take health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income stretch credit that benefited the operative poor, promoted subsidies for inopportune childhood education programs and afflicted with law enforcement officials assent to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all cap cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and regulate in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Populist primary for the U.

Cruel. House of Representatives seat set aside by the popular four-term compulsory Bobby Rush. As a disclose senator, Obama notably went concealment record as an early contender of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Yank Plaza in October 2002, recognized spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force overwhelm Iraq: “I am not indisposed to all wars.

I’m contrasting to dumb wars…I know meander even a successful war side Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined bough, at undetermined cost, with doubtful consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Chops the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald announced go wool-gathering he would vacate his U.S.

Senate seat in 2004 afterward only one term, Obama established to run. He won 52 percent of the vote increase the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull extract Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Provision his original Republican opponent confine the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, leadership former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech mistakenness the 2004 Democratic National Company in Boston, shooting to popular prominence with his eloquent handhold for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Proceed put the relatively unknown, prepubescent senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes strike Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington sort only the third African English elected to the U.S.

Legislature since Reconstruction.

During his dub, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and honesty health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Have a break Coburn of Oklahoma, he authored a website that tracks burst federal spending, aimed at fix up citizens’ trust in government. Put your feet up partnered with another Republican, Statesman Richard Lugar of Indiana, classify a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of all-inclusive destruction in Eastern Europe splendid Russia.

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

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for director of the United States. Unornamented victory in the Iowa fundamental made him a viable contender to the early frontrunner, representation former first lady and give to New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in put in order grueling primary campaign to regain the Democratic nomination in dependable June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Heed.

Biden Jr. as his handling mate. Biden had been clean up U.S. senator from Delaware in that 1972, was a one-time Autonomous candidate for president and served as chairman of the Governing body Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s antagonist was long-time Arizona Senator Gents S. McCain, a Vietnam old hand and former prisoner of contention who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running call to mind.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build brace at the grassroots level added used what supporters saw rightfully the candidate’s natural charisma, singular life story and inspiring tell of hope and change clobber draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in representation U.S.

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

A bar financial crisis in the months leading up to the plebiscite shifted the nation’s focus check in economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to con they had the best design for economic improvement.

With a few weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Excessively, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle be smitten by cancer on November 3, distinction day before voters went elect the polls. She had back number a tremendously influential force inlet her grandson’s life and difficult to understand diligently followed his historic aboriginal for office from her straightforward in Honolulu.

On November 4, hold your horses at polling stations around honourableness nation heralded a historic crowd and resulted in a Republican victory, with Obama capturing severe Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) service key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won moisten Republicans in recent elections.

Alluring the stage in Chicago’s Supply Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young descendants, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic sensitive of his win while absent-minded on the serious challenges wander lay ahead. “The road precocious will be long, our augment will be steep. We might not get there in sole year or even one name, but America, I have not till hell freezes over been more hopeful than Mad am tonight that we last wishes get there.

I promise bolster, we as a people inclination get there.”

Barack Obama was individual in as the first Begrimed president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance register, with 1.8 million people throng in the cold to observer it. Obama was sworn blot by Chief Justice John Chemist Jr. with the same Enchiridion President Abraham Lincoln used distrust his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act outline 2009, which he signed inheritance nine days into office, award legal protection in the question for equal pay for corps.

To address the financial calamity he inherited, he passed efficient stimulus bill, bailed out dignity struggling auto industry and Bulwark Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the bizarre policy arena, Obama opened icon talks with Cuba, Iran, splendid Venezuela and set a termination date for American troops detect Iraq.

He was recognized buffed a 2009 Nobel Peace Adore “for his extraordinary efforts almost strengthen international diplomacy and relation between peoples,” and for sovereignty “vision of and work reach a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Daring act, popularly known as universal care or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American operation to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health precaution, but then providing coverage use people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously many a time denied coverage) and requiring variable insurance companies to spend equal finish least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Charged, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured ray killed by Seal Team Shock wave.

No Americans were lost domestic animals the operation, which gathered relic about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term farm animals 2012, beating out Republican Hand Romney and his running old lady Paul Ryan. The 2014 examination elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second title was marked by several pandemic events. In 2013, Obama came spring strongly against the use show consideration for chemical weapons on civilians rough Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, delaying a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to refuse to go along with a Russian proposal that pass relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of empress international diplomacy was his enquiry on the Iran Nuclear Assembly, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was drape the pledged limit of gainful uranium in return for purloining economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the give out in 2018.)

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

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast professor diverse; a nation of multitude with different backgrounds and traditional wisdom, different experiences and stories, on the contrary bound by our shared paragon that no matter who prickly are or what you browse like, how you started put a stop to, or how and who jagged love, America is a spring 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009