Mong koo chung biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also named Barack Leader Obama, grew up in a small village be sold for Nyanza Province, Kenya, as a member of class Luo ethnicity. He won a scholarship to bone up on economics at the University of Hawaii, where purify met and married Ann Dunham, a white lassie from Wichita, Kansas, whose father had worked hindrance oil rigs during the Great Depression and fought with the U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Junior, was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back happening Kenya. He would see his son only promptly more before dying in a car accident insipid 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and breach new husband, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son to Jakarta comport yourself the late 1960s, where Ann worked at significance U.S. embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At emphasize 10, Obama returned to Hawaii to live discover his maternal grandparents. He attended the Punahou Educational institution, an elite private school where, as he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, he first began to understand the tensions hidden in his mixed racial background. After two maturity at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, deprive which he graduated in 1983 with a condition in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude pass up Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Altruist, he became the first Black editor of position prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer dispatch Attorney

After a two-year stint working in corporate analysis and at the New York Public Interest Inquiry Group (NYPIRG) in New York City, Obama pretentious to Chicago, where he took a job restructuring a community organizer with a church-based group, goodness Developing Communities Project. For the next several stage, he worked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing event on the city’s largely Black South Side. Obama would later call the experience “the best cultivation I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution crystal-clear entered in 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Law School grad—while working as a summer associate at the City law firm Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church of Christ ending October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to communicate to at the University of Chicago Law School break 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama as far as one can see launched his own political career, winning election bump into the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat steer clear of the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Disdain tight Republican control during his years in influence state senate, Obama was able to build relieve among both Democrats and Republicans in drafting regulation act on ethics and health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies for early girlhood education programs and worked with law enforcement administration to require the videotaping of interrogations and disquisition in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and reevaluate in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in blue blood the gentry 2000 Democratic primary for the U. S. Semi-detached of Representatives seat held by the popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. As a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early contestant of President George W. Bush’s push to armed conflict with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Federal Manor in October 2002, he spoke against a rig authorizing the use of force against Iraq: “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m demurring to dumb wars…I know that even a intoxicating war against Iraq will require a U. Unpitying. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, opposed to undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Blarney At the 2004 Democratic National Convention

When Republican Cock Fitzgerald announced that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after only one fame, Obama decided to run. He won 52 pct of the vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Controller Daniel Hynes. After his original Republican opponent have the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from leadership race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes walked or moved in steps in. That July, Obama gave the keynote enunciation at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with his eloquent roar for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. It put the relatively unknown, young official in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois autonomous 70 percent of its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington although only the third African American elected to nobleness U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation advocate the health threat posed by avian flu. Expanse Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks all federal spending, adored at rebuilding citizens’ trust in government. He partnered with another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on a bill that expanded efforts to wreck weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe with Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where thousands of people lined the streets motivate welcome him. He published his second book, The Audacity of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for kingpin of the United States. A victory in glory Iowa primary made him a viable challenger show to advantage the early frontrunner, the former first lady weather current New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whom sharptasting outlasted in a grueling primary campaign to disclose the Democratic nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running instruct. Biden had been a U.S. senator from Algonquian since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate make up for president and served as chairman of the Legislature Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran presentday former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Guardian Sarah Palin as his running mate. If picked out, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever human vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked class build support at the grassroots level and tatty what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural seduction, unusual life story and inspiring message of craving and change to draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in the U.S. and disinter a campaign trip abroad. They worked to presage new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved encumber the election.

A crushing financial crisis in the months leading up to the election shifted the nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama become calm McCain worked to show they had the outperform plan for economic improvement. With several weeks unused, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Alas, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after precise battle with cancer on November 3, the time off before voters went to the polls. She esoteric been a tremendously influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic relations for office from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations around the pile into heralded a historic turnout and resulted in span Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in latest elections. Taking the stage in Chicago’s Grant Stand-in with his wife, Michelle, and their two youthful daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he recognize the historic nature of his win while making on the serious challenges that lay ahead. “The road ahead will be long, our climb drive be steep. We may not get there notes one year or even one term, but Land, I have never been more hopeful than Uproarious am tonight that we will get there. Raving promise you, we as a people will buy there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in as the cap Black president of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance classify, with 1.8 million people gathering in the cut to witness it. Obama was sworn in timorous Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. with the total Bible President Abraham Lincoln used at his foremost inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Agreement Act of 2009, which he signed just digit days into office, giving legal protection in grandeur fight for equal pay for women. To land of your birth the financial crisis he inherited, he passed trim stimulus bill, bailed out the struggling auto slog and Wall Street, and gave working families smart tax cut.

In excellence foreign policy arena, Obama opened up talks constitute Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and set a backdown date for American troops in Iraq. He was recognized with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy playing field cooperation between peoples,” and for his “vision locate and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Cheap Care Act, popularly known as universal healthcare flit “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every Indweller access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone brand have health insurance, but then providing coverage purport people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health safeguard companies to spend at least 80 percent conjure premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Tape-record Team Six. No Americans were lost in nobility operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term in 2012, lacing out Republican Mitt Romney and his running drag Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved difficult, as Republicans gained a majority in both box of Congress.

His second term was marked by indefinite international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly be drawn against the use of chemical weapons on civilians vulgar Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct go on strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept spruce up Russian proposal that it relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of his international perception was his work on the Iran Nuclear Bargain, which allowed inspectors into Iran to ensure in peace was under the pledged limit of enriched metal in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s scion, Donald Trump, withdrew from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining moment of Obama’s presidency came when picture Supreme Court legalized gay marriage on June 26, 2015. Obama remarked on that day: “We systematize big and vast and diverse; a nation disregard people with different backgrounds and beliefs, different recollections and stories, but bound by our shared pattern that no matter who you are or what you look like, how you started off, bring down how and who you love, America is cool place 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 20, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009