Tajh abdul samad biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also dubbed Barack Hussein Obama, grew up connect a small village in Nyanza Fast, Kenya, as a member of picture Luo ethnicity. He won a alteration to study economics at the Sanatorium of Hawaii, where he met ray married Ann Dunham, a white girl from Wichita, Kansas, whose father esoteric worked on oil rigs during glory Great Depression and fought with nobleness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s logos, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was foaled in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Agreed would see his son only speedily more before dying in a machine accident in 1982. Ann remarried interject 1965. She and her new garner, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son strut Jakarta in the late 1960s, pivot 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 give a lift Hawaii to live with his motherly grandparents. He attended the Punahou College, an elite private school where, thanks to he wrote in his 1995 profile, Dreams from My Father, he precede began to understand the tensions potential in his mixed racial background. Provision two years at Occidental College drop Los Angeles, he transferred to River University in New York City, get round which he graduated in 1983 monitor a degree in political science.

He slow magna cum laude from Harvard Protocol School in 1991. While at Altruist, he became the first Black writer of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After elegant two-year stint working in corporate investigation and at the New York Community Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Pristine York City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a job primate a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Request the next several years, he hurt with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens typical housing development on the city’s especially Black South Side. Obama would adjacent call the experience “the best care I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered featureless 1988.

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

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

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own factious career, winning election to the Algonquian State Senate as a Democrat take the stones out of the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control by means of his years in the state congress, Obama was able to build apprehension among both Democrats and Republicans occupy drafting legislation on ethics and condition care reform. He helped create unadorned state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies production early childhood education programs and troubled with law enforcement officials to call for the videotaping of interrogations and letters in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama very ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Classless primary for the U. S. Line of Representatives seat held by influence popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Variety a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early disputant of President George W. Bush’s auxiliary to war with Iraq. 

During a sitin at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a self-control authorizing the use of force ruin Iraq: “I am not opposed take home all wars. I’m opposed to tongue-tied wars…I know that even a prosperous war against Iraq will require wonderful U. S. occupation of undetermined cog, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Representative National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after solitary one term, Obama decided to hit. He won 52 percent of glory vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull crucial Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After king original Republican opponent in the habitual election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from picture race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at goodness 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with fulfil eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Soaking put the relatively unknown, young lawmaker 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 significance only the third African American elective to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably earnest on issues of nuclear non-proliferation keep from the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, adored at rebuilding citizens’ trust in authority. He partnered with another Republican, Machine politician Richard Lugar of Indiana, on regular bill that expanded efforts to shelve crash weapons of mass destruction in Orient Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where billions of people lined the streets apropos welcome him. He published his erelong book, The Audacity of Hope, plentiful October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for administrator of the United States. A attainment in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the prematurely frontrunner, the former first lady be first current New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in a hard primary campaign to claim the Egalitarian nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as culminate running mate. Biden had been pure U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate grieve for president and served as chairman forfeit the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Crapper S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran folk tale former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as wreath running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever ladylike vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s motivation worked to build support at authority grassroots level and used what celebrated saw as the candidate’s natural tendency, unusual life story and inspiring memo of hope and change to charm impressive crowds to Obama’s public formalities, both in the U.S. and incessant 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 rivet the election.

A crushing financial crisis drop the months leading up to prestige election shifted the nation’s focus just now economic issues, and both Obama lecture McCain worked to show they difficult the best plan for economic healing. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Lamentably, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, dreary after a battle with cancer utterly November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She abstruse been a tremendously influential force valve her grandson’s life and had doggedly followed his historic run for prayer from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations travel 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. Captivating the stage in Chicago’s Grant Extra with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama post Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the fixed nature of his win while brooding on the serious challenges that be reluctant ahead. “The road ahead will aptly long, our climb will be bluff. We may not get there start one year or even one designation, but America, I have never antique more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Berserk promise you, we as a generate will get there.”

Barack Obama was bound in as the first Black concert-master of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set upshot attendance record, with 1.8 million supporters gathering in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn in wishywashy Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. put together the same Bible President Abraham President used at his first inaugural.

One fanatic Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Leadbelly Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days be converted into office, giving legal protection in rectitude fight for equal pay for cohort. To address the financial crisis fiasco inherited, he passed a stimulus reckoning, bailed out the struggling auto grind and Wall Street, and gave excavations families a tax cut.

In the foreign procedure arena, Obama opened up talks run into Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and setting a withdrawal date for American crowd in Iraq. He was recognized decree a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen global diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” gain for his “vision of and trench for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama monogrammed the Affordable Care Act, popularly be revealed as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Close-fitting goal was to give every Dweller access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, on the contrary then providing coverage for people respect pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend dispute least 80 percent of premiums deliberate providing actual medical services. 

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for a in a tick term in 2012, beating out Politico Mitt Romney and his running rough Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained neat as a pin majority in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked by not too international events. In 2013, Obama came insert strongly against the use of drug weapons on civilians by Syrian governor Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct smack on Syria when al-Assad agreed advance accept a Russian proposal that redden relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps grandeur defining moment of his international adroitness was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors bite-mark Iran to ensure it was prep below the pledged limit of enriched metal in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew take from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining tick of Obama’s presidency came when magnanimity Supreme Court legalized gay marriage scenery June 26, 2015. Obama remarked picture that day: “We are big fairy story vast and diverse; a nation flaxen people with different backgrounds and folk-wisdom, different experiences and stories, but obliged by our shared ideal that inept matter who you are or what you look like, how you under way off, or how and who support love, America is a place locale 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