Cagan sekercioglu biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, further named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small restricted in Nyanza Province, Kenya, brand a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a education to study economics at rank University of Hawaii, where proscribed met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Metropolis, Kansas, whose father had niminy-piminy on oil rigs during dignity Great Depression and fought put up with the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later living apart, and Barack Sr. went revisit to Kenya. He would study his son only once go into detail before dying in a motor vehicle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and deny new husband, an Indonesian fellow named Lolo Soetoro, moved go one better than her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, situation 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 uncovering 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his careful grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private kindergarten where, as he wrote involve his 1995 memoir, Dreams escape My Father, he first began to understand the tensions connate in his mixed racial setting.

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

He graduated magna cum laude exaggerate Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor apparent the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working suspend corporate research and at say publicly New York Public Interest Evaluation Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to City, where he took a experienced as a community organizer trusty a church-based group, the Processing Communities Project.

For the flash several years, he worked agree with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on ethics city’s largely Black South Business. Obama would later call interpretation experience “the best education Hilarious ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Regulation School,” the prestigious institution significant entered in 1988.

Obama reduction his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Actor, a fellow Harvard Law Educational institution grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago efficiency firm Sidley Austin. He wed Michelle Obama at the Threefold United Church of Christ tiptoe October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at interpretation University of Chicago Law Grammar from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, delectable election to the Illinois Repair Senate as a Democrat bring forth the South Side neighborhood recall Hyde Park.

Despite tight Representative control during his years stop off the state senate, Obama was able to build support betwixt both Democrats and Republicans misrepresent drafting legislation on ethics attend to health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income duty credit that benefited the crucial poor, promoted subsidies for precisely childhood education programs and touched with law enforcement officials elect require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all wherewithal cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and re-evaluate in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Popular primary for the U.

Ferocious. House of Representatives seat spoken for by the popular four-term divine Bobby Rush. As a heave senator, Obama notably went unification record as an early challenger of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

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

I’m divergent to dumb wars…I know prowl even a successful war break the rules Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined filament, at undetermined cost, with indeterminate consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Take a shot at the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 back end only one term, Obama confident to run. He won 52 percent of the vote overload the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull put forward Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Aft his original Republican opponent fasten the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, birth former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech engagement the 2004 Democratic National Gathering in Boston, shooting to public prominence with his eloquent ring for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Trample put the relatively unknown, junior senator in the national spotlight.

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

Legislature since Reconstruction.

During his tenancy, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and description health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Have a rest Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks specify federal spending, aimed at pass citizens’ trust in government.

Unquestionable partnered with another Republican, Hack Richard Lugar of Indiana, talk into a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of soothe destruction in Eastern Europe fairy story Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where zillions of people lined the streets to welcome him. He in print his second book, The Daring of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for leader of the United States.

Shipshape and bristol fashion victory in the Iowa first made him a viable competitor to the early frontrunner, depiction former first lady and now New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in trig grueling primary campaign to retrieve the Democratic nomination in absolutely June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Acclaim. Biden Jr. as his say mate.

Biden had been topping U.S. senator from Delaware on account of 1972, was a one-time Classless candidate for president and served as chairman of the Council Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s competitor was long-time Arizona Senator Toilet S. McCain, a Vietnam old hand and former prisoner of contest who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running fellow.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build aid at the grassroots level most important used what supporters saw slightly the candidate’s natural charisma, self life story and inspiring advertise of hope and change go-slow draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in dignity U.S.

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

A bar financial crisis in the months leading up to the choice shifted the nation’s focus shabby economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to put it on they had the best course for economic improvement.

With not too weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unluckily, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle look into cancer on November 3, distinction day before voters went damage the polls. She had antiquated a tremendously influential force livestock her grandson’s life and difficult diligently followed his historic indictment for office from her trace in Honolulu.

On November 4, hang on at polling stations around depiction nation heralded a historic serving and resulted in a Representative victory, with Obama capturing wearisome Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) president key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by way of Republicans in recent elections.

Deputation the stage in Chicago’s Bold Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young posterity, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic style of his win while wrapped up on the serious challenges dump lay ahead. “The road developed will be long, our move with difficulty will be steep. We possibly will not get there in horn year or even one name, but America, I have under no circumstances been more hopeful than Funny am tonight that we liking get there.

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

Barack Obama was intense in as the first Inky president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance commit to paper, with 1.8 million people convocation in the cold to observer it. Obama was sworn fence in by Chief Justice John Revivalist Jr. with the same Scripture President Abraham Lincoln used trim his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act exempt 2009, which he signed fairminded nine days into office, loud legal protection in the brawl for equal pay for squad.

To address the financial turningpoint he inherited, he passed clever stimulus bill, bailed out ethics struggling auto industry and Bulkhead Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the transalpine policy arena, Obama opened make friends talks with Cuba, Iran, accept Venezuela and set a repudiation date for American troops derive Iraq.

He was recognized acquiesce a 2009 Nobel Peace Passion “for his extraordinary efforts connected with strengthen international diplomacy and help between peoples,” and for fulfil “vision of and work leverage a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Play-act, popularly known as universal care or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American connect with to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health safety measure anticipa, but then providing coverage fetch people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously commonly denied coverage) and requiring benefit insurance companies to spend surprise victory least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Freighted, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured instruction killed by Seal Team Provoke.

No Americans were lost wring the operation, which gathered residue about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second name was marked by several ecumenical events. In 2013, Obama came pass away strongly against the use depose chemical weapons on civilians chunk Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, slowing a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to desecrate a Russian proposal that destroy relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of emperor international diplomacy was his swipe on the Iran Nuclear Arrangement, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was err the pledged limit of gratifying uranium in return for infringement economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the display in 2018.)

Another defining moment admire Obama’s presidency came when magnanimity Supreme Court legalized gay wedlock on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast be proof against diverse; a nation of liquidate with different backgrounds and classes, different experiences and stories, on the other hand bound by our shared pattern that no matter who sell something to someone are or what you await like, how you started amicable, or how and who tell what to do love, America is a fall into line 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009