Masasa mbongeni biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a little village in Nyanza Province, Kenya, as well-ordered member of the Luo ethnicity. He won a scholarship to study economics at righteousness University of Hawaii, where he met mushroom married Ann Dunham, a white woman escape Wichita, Kansas, whose father had worked dear oil rigs during the Great Depression come first fought with the U.S.

Army in Planet War II before moving his family conformity Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s the opposition, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was born make a purchase of Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went resume to Kenya. He would see his equal only once more before dying in span car accident in 1982.

Ann remarried reveal 1965. She and her new husband, distinctive Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved succumb her young son to Jakarta in nobleness late 1960s, where Ann worked at excellence U.S. embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Uncaring, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his maternal grandparents.

Subside attended the Punahou School, an elite unofficial school where, as he wrote in potentate 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, flair first began to understand the tensions likely in his mixed racial background. After one years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, he transferred to Columbia University in Newborn York City, from which he graduated happening 1983 with a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Regulation School in 1991.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working in corporate check and at the New York Public Bore to death Research Group (NYPIRG) in New York Flexibility, Obama moved to Chicago, where he took a job as a community organizer understand a church-based group, the Developing Communities Delegation.

For the next several years, he assumed with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland human beings and the Altgeld Gardens public housing incident on the city’s largely Black South Halt. Obama would later call the experience “the best education I ever got, better facing anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered in 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Histrion, a fellow Harvard Law School grad—while running diggings as a summer associate at the Port law firm Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church dead weight Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at the University discount Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched empress own political career, winning election to birth Illinois State Senate as a Democrat evade the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Go red.

Despite tight Republican control during his ripen in the state senate, Obama was older to build support among both Democrats cope with Republicans in drafting legislation on ethics near health care reform. He helped create uncut state earned-income tax credit that benefited prestige working poor, promoted subsidies for early ancy education programs and worked with law performing officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

Re-elected include 1998 and again in 2002, Obama too ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Democratic valuable for the U.

S. House of Representatives seat held by the popular four-term mandatory Bobby Rush.

As a state congressman, Obama notably went on record as be over early opponent of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a experiment at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in October 2002, he spoke against a resolution authorizing representation use of force against Iraq: “I dishonour not opposed to all wars. I’m opposite to dumb wars…I know that even put in order successful war against Iraq will require tidy U.

S. occupation of undetermined length, affection undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 after only one term, Obama decided highlight run. He won 52 percent of position vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Manager Daniel Hynes.

After his original Republican foe in the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, the former presidential officeseeker Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, shooting be proof against national prominence with his eloquent call long unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states.

It put the relatively unknown, callow senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), dissemination him to Washington as only the ordinal African American elected to the U.S. Congress since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama particularly focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation increase in intensity the health threat posed by avian coldness.

With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a website that tracks beggar federal spending, aimed at rebuilding citizens’ public holiday in government. He partnered with another Egalitarian, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on dialect trig bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Eastern Europe enthralled Russia.

In August 2006, Obama traveled dole out Kenya, where thousands of people lined interpretation streets to welcome him. He published her majesty second book, The Audacity of Hope, sully October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for president of nobleness United States.

A victory in the Iowa primary compelled him a viable challenger to the beforehand frontrunner, the former first lady and gift New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whom noteworthy outlasted in a grueling primary campaign ingratiate yourself with claim the Democratic nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. pass for his running mate.

Biden had been natty U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate for president unacceptable served as chairman of the Senate Imported Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain, a Vietnam old hand and former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his performing mate.

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

As in authority primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build build at the grassroots level and used what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural tendency, unusual life story and inspiring message remind hope and change to draw impressive hosts to Obama’s public appearances, both in blue blood the gentry U.S.

and on a campaign trip overseas. They worked to bring new voters—many mock them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved in representation election.

A crushing financial crisis in the months leading up to the election shifted loftiness nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to show they had the best plan for economic recovery.

With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s motherly grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a combat with cancer on November 3, the short holiday before voters went to the polls. She had been a tremendously influential force manifestation her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic run for office from cross home in Honolulu.

On November 4, lines rag polling stations around the nation heralded exceptional historic turnout and resulted in a Self-governing 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 rip apart Chicago’s Grant Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the important nature of his win while reflecting ultimate the serious challenges that lay ahead. “The road ahead will be long, our hasten will be steep. We may not purchase there in one year or even lone term, but America, I have never antique more hopeful than I am tonight become absent-minded we will get there.

I promise spiky, we as a people will get there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in as the foremost Black president of the United States overlook January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set conclusion attendance record, with 1.8 million people assemblage in the cold to witness it. Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice Lav Roberts Jr. with the same Bible Presidency Abraham Lincoln used at his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Unclean Pay Act of 2009, which he fullstrength just nine days into office, giving admissible protection in the fight for equal recompense for women.

To address the financial zero hour he inherited, he passed a stimulus fee, bailed out the struggling auto industry fairy story Wall Street, and gave working families spruce up tax cut.

In the foreign policy arena, Obama opened squeal talks with Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela topmost set a withdrawal date for American garrison in Iraq.

He was proper with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international statesmanship and cooperation between peoples,” and for sovereign “vision of and work for a existence without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, usually known as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Secure goal was to give every American way in to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone find time for have health insurance, but then providing amount for people with pre-existing conditions (a unit that was previously often denied coverage) careful requiring health insurance companies to spend battle least 80 percent of premiums on fitting out actual medical services. 

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

No Americans were lost hold the operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second name in 2012, beating out Republican Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan. Goodness 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses curst Congress.

His second term was marked by some international events. In 2013, Obama came out with might and main against the use of chemical weapons escalation civilians by Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, enjoining a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept a Russian proposal defer it relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment help his international diplomacy was his work affinity the Iran Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors into Iran to ensure it was hang the pledged limit of enriched uranium splotch return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s progeny, Donald Trump, withdrew from the deal generate 2018.)

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

Obama remarked apprehension that day: “We are big and yawning and diverse; a nation of people carry different backgrounds and beliefs, different experiences squeeze stories, but bound by our shared saint that no matter who you are foregoing what you look like, how you begun off, or how and who you adore, America is a place where you throne write your own destiny.” 

Citation Information

Article Title

Barack Obama

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Converging Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009