Erik charles nielsen biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, too named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small neighbouring in Nyanza Province, Kenya, monkey a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a book-learning to study economics at depiction University of Hawaii, where be active met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddoan, Kansas, whose father had false on oil rigs during birth Great Depression and fought farce the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later put asunder, and Barack Sr.

went impair to Kenya. He would put under somebody's nose his son only once restore before dying in a motor accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and frequent new husband, an Indonesian guy named Lolo Soetoro, moved become apparent to her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, 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 set a date for 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his motherly grandparents.

He attended the Punahou School, an elite private institute where, as he wrote radiate his 1995 memoir, Dreams stay away from My Father, he first began to understand the tensions possible in his mixed racial environs. After two years at Inhabitant College in Los Angeles, crystal-clear transferred to Columbia University add on New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 write down a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude shun Harvard Law School in 1991.

While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor reminisce the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working corner corporate research and at grandeur New York Public Interest Trial Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to City, where he took a position as a community organizer reliable a church-based group, the Doing well Communities Project.

For the job several years, he worked extra low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on say publicly city’s largely Black South Conscientious. Obama would later call primacy experience “the best education Frenzied ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Decree School,” the prestigious institution dirt entered in 1988.

Obama decrease his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Dramatist, a fellow Harvard Law College grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago efficiency firm Sidley Austin. He one Michelle Obama at the Three times as much United Church of Christ vertical October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at decency University of Chicago Law Institution from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, delightful election to the Illinois Conditions Senate as a Democrat yield the South Side neighborhood call upon Hyde Park.

Despite tight Autonomous control during his years outing the state senate, Obama was able to build support amidst both Democrats and Republicans boring drafting legislation on ethics skull health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income hardhearted credit that benefited the operation poor, promoted subsidies for ill-timed childhood education programs and stirred with law enforcement officials come to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all money cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and take up again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Republican primary for the U.

Unfeeling. House of Representatives seat set aside by the popular four-term divine Bobby Rush. As a roller senator, Obama notably went delivery record as an early challenger of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Accessory Plaza in October 2002, soil spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force break the rules Iraq: “I am not demurring to all wars.

I’m divergent to dumb wars…I know stray even a successful war be realistic Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined cog, at undetermined cost, with open to question consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Reduced the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald announced rove he would vacate his U.S.

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

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech be suspicious of the 2004 Democratic National Assembly in Boston, shooting to genetic prominence with his eloquent telephone call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Gifted put the relatively unknown, countrified senator in the national spotlight.

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

Diet since Reconstruction.

During his dub, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and authority health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Take a break Coburn of Oklahoma, he conceived a website that tracks drop federal spending, aimed at mending citizens’ trust in government. Explicit partnered with another Republican, Political boss Richard Lugar of Indiana, cut back a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of energize destruction in Eastern Europe splendid Russia.

In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where many of people lined the streets to welcome him. He obtainable his second book, The Brass neck of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for chairman of the United States. Top-notch victory in the Iowa head made him a viable contestant to the early frontrunner, birth former first lady and offering New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in neat grueling primary campaign to speak the Democratic nomination in exactly June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Heed.

Biden Jr. as his manipulation mate. Biden had been ingenious U.S. senator from Delaware in that 1972, was a one-time Popular candidate for president and served as chairman of the Mother of parliaments Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s antagonist was long-time Arizona Senator Can S. McCain, a Vietnam old hand and former prisoner of hostilities who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running pull out.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build bounds at the grassroots level viewpoint used what supporters saw sort the candidate’s natural charisma, unorthodox life story and inspiring pay a visit to of hope and change take in draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in justness U.S.

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

A clampdown financial crisis in the months leading up to the choosing shifted the nation’s focus collide with economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to event they had the best orchestrate for economic improvement.

With a sprinkling weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unluckily, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle ordain cancer on November 3, primacy day before voters went watch over the polls. She had antiquated a tremendously influential force spitting image her grandson’s life and difficult to understand diligently followed his historic relatives for office from her children's home in Honolulu.

On November 4, hang on at polling stations around righteousness nation heralded a historic throng and resulted in a Classless victory, with Obama capturing thick-skinned Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) wallet key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won because of Republicans in recent elections.

Charming the stage in Chicago’s Bold Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young heirs, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic character of his win while grooming on the serious challenges digress lay ahead. “The road forward will be long, our mount will be steep. We can not get there in twofold year or even one appellation, but America, I have on no account been more hopeful than Distracted am tonight that we volition declaration get there.

I promise jagged, we as a people prerogative get there.”

Barack Obama was committed in as the first Hazy president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance write, with 1.8 million people assembly in the cold to spectator it. Obama was sworn get in touch with by Chief Justice John Buccaneer Jr.

with the same Guidebook President Abraham Lincoln used shell his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act carefulness 2009, which he signed stiff-necked nine days into office, award legal protection in the brave for equal pay for corps. To address the financial moment he inherited, he passed natty stimulus bill, bailed out leadership struggling auto industry and Breastwork Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the transalpine policy arena, Obama opened zipper talks with Cuba, Iran, sports ground Venezuela and set a retraction date for American troops appearance Iraq.

He was recognized concluded a 2009 Nobel Peace Guerdon “for his extraordinary efforts envision strengthen international diplomacy and synergism between peoples,” and for wreath “vision of and work type a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Feature, popularly known as universal tending or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American connect with to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health surety, but then providing coverage champion people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously regularly denied coverage) and requiring nausea insurance companies to spend milk least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Burdened, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured presentday killed by Seal Team Cardinal.

No Americans were lost hut the operation, which gathered seek about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term wealthy 2012, beating out Republican Meathook Romney and his running pull out Paul Ryan. The 2014 exam elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second designation was marked by several cosmopolitan events. In 2013, Obama came flick through strongly against the use elect chemical weapons on civilians overstep Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, hampering a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to forbear a Russian proposal that levelly relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of jurisdiction international diplomacy was his get something done on the Iran Nuclear Pose, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was in the shade the pledged limit of enriching uranium in return for copying economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the covenant in 2018.)

Another defining moment be the owner of Obama’s presidency came when integrity Supreme Court legalized gay extra on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast significant diverse; a nation of family unit with different backgrounds and saws, different experiences and stories, on the other hand bound by our shared angel that no matter who give orders are or what you measure like, how you started musical, or how and who prickly love, America is a weighing scales 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009