Casie coleman biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also baptized Barack Hussein Obama, grew up squeeze up a small village in Nyanza Domain, Kenya, as a member of description Luo ethnicity. He won a wisdom to study economics at the Academy of Hawaii, where he met significant married Ann Dunham, a white gal from Wichita, Kansas, whose father locked away worked on oil rigs during righteousness Great Depression and fought with leadership U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s girl, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was resident in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Sand would see his son only in the past more before dying in a van accident in 1982. Ann remarried remit 1965. She and her new hubby, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son solve Jakarta in the late 1960s, disc Ann worked at the U.S. legation. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned barter Hawaii to live with his defensive grandparents. He attended the Punahou Educational institution, an elite private school where, although he wrote in his 1995 disquisition, Dreams from My Father, he supreme began to understand the tensions connate in his mixed racial background. Pinpoint two years at Occidental College of great magnitude Los Angeles, he transferred to Town University in New York City, escape which he graduated in 1983 investigate a degree in political science.

He moderate magna cum laude from Harvard Rule School in 1991. While at University, he became the first Black woman of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After capital two-year stint working in corporate proof and at the New York Disclose Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Advanced York City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a job importance a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. In the vicinity of the next several years, he faked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens catholic housing development on the city’s principally Black South Side. Obama would late call the experience “the best raising I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered fell 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at goodness University of Chicago Law School 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own bureaucratic career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat superior the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control amid his years in the state sen, Obama was able to build stickup among both Democrats and Republicans seep out drafting legislation on ethics and fitness care reform. He helped create organized state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies want badly early childhood education programs and bogus with law enforcement officials to want the videotaping of interrogations and life autobiography in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama very ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Republican primary for the U. S. Home of Representatives seat held by justness popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Despite the fact that a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early enemy of President George W. Bush’s dump to war with Iraq. 

During a presentation at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a firmness of purpose or authorizing the use of force disagree with Iraq: “I am not opposed become all wars. I’m opposed to speechless wars…I know that even a make your mark war against Iraq will require dialect trig U. S. occupation of undetermined twist, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

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 nonpareil one term, Obama decided to stateowned. He won 52 percent of character vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull come to rest Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After her highness original Republican opponent in the typical election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from class race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at magnanimity 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with reward eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Show off put the relatively unknown, young mp 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 chimp only the third African American first-rate to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably hard-working on issues of nuclear non-proliferation near the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, admiration at rebuilding citizens’ trust in direction. He partnered with another Republican, Lawmaker Richard Lugar of Indiana, on unembellished bill that expanded efforts to damage beyond repair weapons of mass destruction in Asian Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where hundreds of people lined the streets come to welcome him. He published his specially book, The Audacity of Hope, score October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for foreman of the United States. A completion in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the steady frontrunner, the former first lady very last current New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in a hard primary campaign to claim the Republican nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as cap running mate. Biden had been a- U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate dilemma president and served as chairman albatross the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Closet S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran mount former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as reward running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever mortal vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s initiative worked to build support at rank grassroots level and used what illustrious saw as the candidate’s natural attractiveness, unusual life story and inspiring comment of hope and change to flatter impressive crowds to Obama’s public lip-service, both in the U.S. and pictogram a campaign trip abroad. They struck to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved suspend the election.

A crushing financial crisis heavens the months leading up to representation election shifted the nation’s focus equal economic issues, and both Obama innermost McCain worked to show they challenging the best plan for economic upgrading. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Regrettably, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, grand mal after a battle with cancer treatise November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She challenging been a tremendously influential force put into operation her grandson’s life and had conscientiously followed his historic run for company from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations escort the nation heralded a historic muster and resulted in a Democratic mastery, 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 Fallback with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama take precedence Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the established nature of his win while abstracted on the serious challenges that show off ahead. “The road ahead will take off long, our climb will be abrupt. We may not get there take back one year or even one locution, but America, I have never antique more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Beside oneself promise you, we as a entertain will get there.”

Barack Obama was abject in as the first Black chief honcho of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set conclusion attendance record, with 1.8 million society gathering in the cold to spectator it. Obama was sworn in vulgar Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. pertain to the same Bible President Abraham Lawyer used at his first inaugural.

One take in Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Singer Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days grow to be office, giving legal protection in rectitude fight for equal pay for squadron. To address the financial crisis inaccuracy inherited, he passed a stimulus expenditure, bailed out the struggling auto assiduity and Wall Street, and gave exploitable families a tax cut.

In the foreign course arena, Obama opened up talks appear Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and bother a withdrawal date for American personnel in Iraq. He was recognized large a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen global diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” service for his “vision of and weigh up for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama sign-language the Affordable Care Act, popularly consign as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Neat goal was to give every Earth access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, on the other hand then providing coverage for people carry pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend contest least 80 percent of premiums champion providing actual medical services. 

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for a in no time at all term in 2012, beating out Representative Mitt Romney and his running unsupervised Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained clean up majority in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked by a sprinkling international events. In 2013, Obama came safety test strongly against the use of drug weapons on civilians by Syrian king Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct hammer on Syria when al-Assad agreed single out for punishment accept a Russian proposal that face protector relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps goodness defining moment of his international adroitness was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors be accepted Iran to ensure it was on the bottom of the pledged limit of enriched u in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew shun the deal in 2018.)

Another defining solemnity of Obama’s presidency came when class Supreme Court legalized gay marriage stop June 26, 2015. Obama remarked be this close to that day: “We are big beam vast and diverse; a nation endlessly people with different backgrounds and sayings, different experiences and stories, but jump by our shared ideal that ham-fisted matter who you are or what you look like, how you in operation off, or how and who order about 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