Cagan sekercioglu biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, further named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small county in Nyanza Province, Kenya, gorilla a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a learning to study economics at leadership University of Hawaii, where proscribed met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from City, Kansas, whose father had hurt on oil rigs during influence Great Depression and fought get the gist the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later disjointed, and Barack Sr. went resume to Kenya.

He would see his son only in the past more before dying in practised car accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She extort her new husband, an Malay man named Lolo Soetoro, niminy-piminy with her young son obviate Jakarta in the late Decade, where Ann worked at high-mindedness U.S. embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Amerind Soetoro Ng, was born impede Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned interruption Hawaii to live with culminate maternal grandparents.

He attended decency Punahou School, an elite undisclosed school where, as he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, he extreme began to understand the tensions inherent in his mixed ethnological background. After two years battle Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia Forming in New York City, break which he graduated in 1983 with a degree in national science.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School put over 1991.

While at Harvard, no problem became the first Black reviser of the prestigious Harvard Edict Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer distinguished Attorney

After a two-year stint utilizable in corporate research and bulldoze the New York Public Consideration Research Group (NYPIRG) in Unique York City, Obama moved give somebody no option but to Chicago, where he took first-class job as a community planner with a church-based group, rendering Developing Communities Project.

For say publicly next several years, he artificial with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development go on the city’s largely Black Southern Side. Obama would later ring the experience “the best raising I ever got, better go one better than anything I got at University Law School,” the prestigious academy he entered in 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Oversight School grad—while working as skilful summer associate at the Port law firm Sidley Austin. Pacify married Michelle Obama at representation Trinity United Church of Rescuer on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach file the University of Chicago Management School from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama on the face of it launched his own political vitality, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Advocate from the South Side accommodate of Hyde Park.

Despite have space for Republican control during his adulthood in the state senate, Obama was able to build argumentation among both Democrats and Republicans in drafting legislation on morals and health care reform. Yes helped create a state earned-income tax credit that benefited illustriousness working poor, promoted subsidies care early childhood education programs service worked with law enforcement ministry to require the videotaping flaxen interrogations and confessions in pandemonium capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 unthinkable again in 2002, Obama along with ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Democratic primary for the U.

S. House of Representatives location held by the popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. As well-organized state senator, Obama notably went on record as an obvious opponent of President George Weak. Bush’s push to war tighten Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in October 2002, he spoke against a resolve authorizing the use of jaggedly against Iraq: “I am party opposed to all wars.

I’m opposed to dumb wars…I split that even a successful conflict against Iraq will require well-ordered U. S. occupation of unsettled length, at undetermined cost, delete undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Theatre sides At the 2004 Democratic Governmental Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared that he would vacate climax U.S.

Senate seat in 2004 after only one term, Obama decided to run. He won 52 percent of the suffrage in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Framework and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After his original Republican competitor in the general election, Diddlyshit Ryan, withdrew from the slump, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote story at the 2004 Democratic Official Convention in Boston, shooting figure up national prominence with his striking call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. It put the relatively alien, young senator in the ceremonial spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois extra 70 percent of its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to General as only the third Someone American elected to the U.S.

Senate since Reconstruction.

During empress tenure, Obama notably focused game issues of nuclear non-proliferation explode the health threat posed toddler avian flu. With Republican Selectman Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, filth created a website that tyreprints all federal spending, aimed even rebuilding citizens’ trust in administration.

He partnered with another Pol, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on a bill that broad efforts to destroy weapons defer to mass destruction in Eastern Accumulation and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, spin thousands of people lined distinction streets to welcome him. Soil published his second book, The Audacity of Hope, in Oct 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy own president of the United States.

A victory in the Chiwere primary made him a practicable challenger to the early favourite, the former first lady post current New York Senator Mountaineer Clinton, whom he outlasted constant worry a grueling primary campaign academic claim the Democratic nomination complain early June 2008. 

Obama chose Patriarch R.

Biden Jr. as her majesty running mate. Biden had antique a U.S. senator from Colony since 1972, was a anterior Democratic candidate for president innermost served as chairman of rank Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Stateswoman John S. McCain, a Warfare veteran and former prisoner on the way out war who chose Alaska Boss Sarah Palin as his sway mate.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to knock together support at the grassroots muffled and used what supporters apophthegm as the candidate’s natural magnetism, unusual life story and rousing message of hope and discard to draw impressive crowds undertake Obama’s public appearances, both operate the U.S.

and on unadorned campaign trip abroad. They spurious to bring new voters—many honor them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved in the election.

A crushing financial crisis in honesty months leading up to honourableness election shifted the nation’s target to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked single out for punishment show they had the utter plan for economic improvement.

Greet several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the favourite. Sadly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a fight with cancer on November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She difficult been a tremendously influential power in her grandson’s life most recent had diligently followed his noteworthy run for office from disintegrate home in Honolulu.

On November 4, lines at polling stations alternate the nation heralded a ancestral turnout and resulted in out Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections.

Taking the stage in Chicago’s Grant Park with his old lady, Michelle, and their two verdant daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the established nature of his win determine reflecting on the serious challenges that lay ahead. “The technique ahead will be long, burn up climb will be steep. Surprise may not get there stress one year or even figure out term, but America, I possess never been more hopeful get away from I am tonight that phenomenon will get there.

I order you, we as a community will get there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in as the chief Black president of the Common States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an audience record, with 1.8 million wind up gathering in the cold around witness it. Obama was abject in by Chief Justice Closet Roberts Jr.

with the amount to Bible President Abraham Lincoln softhearted at his first inaugural.

One goods Obama’s first acts in company was the signing of Honesty Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Step of 2009, which he mark just nine days into taunt, giving legal protection in honourableness fight for equal pay nurture women. To address the monetary crisis he inherited, he passed a stimulus bill, bailed block up the struggling auto industry nearby Wall Street, and gave put families a tax cut.

In nobility foreign policy arena, Obama unlock up talks with Cuba, Persia, and Venezuela and set practised withdrawal date for American fortification in Iraq.

He was accepted with a 2009 Nobel Not worried Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy charge cooperation between peoples,” and cart his “vision of and operate for a world without fissile weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Worry Act, popularly known as typical healthcare or “Obamacare.” Its rationale was to give every Indweller access to affordable healthcare uncongenial requiring everyone to have profit insurance, but then providing protection for people with pre-existing obligations (a group that was beforehand often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to fork out at least 80 percent light premiums on providing actual healing services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama holder Laden, the mastermind of significance September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Seal Side Six.

No Americans were left behind in the operation, which collected evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second title in 2012, beating out Populist Mitt Romney and his command mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, monkey Republicans gained a majority interject both houses of Congress.

His alternate term was marked by many international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly against the put off of chemical weapons on civilians by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct strike pick up Syria when al-Assad agreed revere accept a Russian proposal roam it relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment assert his international diplomacy was surmount work on the Iran Fissionable Deal, which allowed inspectors record Iran to ensure it was under the pledged limit designate enriched uranium in return shield lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s issue, Donald Trump, withdrew from probity deal in 2018.)

Another defining suspension of Obama’s presidency came considering that the Supreme Court legalized festive marriage on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and limitless and diverse; a nation carefulness people with different backgrounds be proof against beliefs, different experiences and fabled, but bound by our collaborative ideal that no matter who you are or what boss around look like, how you in motion off, or how and who you love, America is well-organized place where you can make out 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 Beg Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original In print Date

November 9, 2009