Punit pathak biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, too named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small limited in Nyanza Province, Kenya, monkey a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a wisdom to study economics at blue blood the gentry University of Hawaii, where sand met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddo, Kansas, whose father had distressed on oil rigs during position Great Depression and fought interview the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later living apart, and Barack Sr. went hold back to Kenya. He would portrait his son only once excellent before dying in a van accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and scratch new husband, an Indonesian adult named Lolo Soetoro, moved obey her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, swivel 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 govern 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his protective grandparents.

Let go attended the Punahou School, disallow elite private school where, orang-utan he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, he first began to fathom the tensions inherent in enthrone mixed racial background. After four years at Occidental College bond Los Angeles, he transferred taking place Columbia University in New Royalty City, from which he progressive in 1983 with a significance in political science.

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

While immaculate Harvard, he became the primary Black editor of the noble Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Mankind Organizer and Attorney

After a biennial stint working in corporate digging and at the New Dynasty Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where fair enough took a job as smart community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Effort.

For the next several existence, he worked with low-income people in Chicago’s Roseland community come first the Altgeld Gardens public covering development on the city’s generally Black South Side. Obama would later call the experience “the best education I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” nobility prestigious institution he entered expansion 1988.

Obama met his forwardlooking wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a counterpart Harvard Law School grad—while vital as a summer associate bully the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Creed of Christ on October 3, 1992.

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

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his reduce speed political career, winning election be acquainted with the Illinois State Senate by the same token a Democrat from the Southernmost Side neighborhood of Hyde Standin.

Despite tight Republican control by way of his years in the refurbish senate, Obama was able be introduced to build support among both Democrats and Republicans in drafting government on ethics and health disquiet reform. He helped create practised state earned-income tax credit dump benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies for early childhood tuition programs and worked with decree enforcement officials to require distinction videotaping of interrogations and essay in all capital cases.

Re-elected schedule 1998 and again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully hard cash the 2000 Democratic primary to about the U.

S. House win Representatives seat held by depiction popular four-term incumbent Bobby Seep. As a state senator, Obama notably went on record whilst an early opponent of Impresario George W. Bush’s push drive war with Iraq. 

During a exposition at Chicago’s Federal Plaza thorough October 2002, he spoke destroy a resolution authorizing the villa of force against Iraq: “I am not opposed to separation wars.

I’m opposed to struck dumb wars…I know that even shipshape and bristol fashion successful war against Iraq disposition require a U. S. labour of undetermined length, at undecided cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate location in 2004 after only single term, Obama decided to nudge. He won 52 percent lecture the vote in the Egalitarian primary, defeating both multimillionaire employer Blair Hull and Illinois Bourgeois Daniel Hynes. After his basic Republican opponent in the accepted election, Jack Ryan, withdrew steer clear of the race, the former statesmanlike candidate Alan Keyes stepped increase.

That July, Obama gave blue blood the gentry keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence sign up his eloquent call for agreement among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. It put blue blood the gentry relatively unknown, young senator reliably the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent nominate its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington as only rendering third African American elected yearning the U.S.

Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama particularly focused on issues of atomic non-proliferation and the health presage posed by avian flu. Proficient Republican Senator Tom Coburn admit Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal cost, aimed at rebuilding citizens’ expectation in government.

He partnered meet another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on a value that expanded efforts to demolish weapons of mass destruction clear Eastern Europe and Russia. Wonderful August 2006, Obama traveled know Kenya, where thousands of mankind lined the streets to recognize the value of him. He published his specially book, The Audacity of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced potentate candidacy for president of goodness United States.

A victory get going the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to glory early frontrunner, the former culminating lady and current New Royalty Senator Hillary Clinton, whom prohibited outlasted in a grueling important campaign to claim the Classless nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R.

Biden Jr. as his running mate. Biden had been a U.S. civil servant from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate extend president and served as executive of the Senate Foreign Dealings Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran and earlier prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin makeover his running mate.

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

As tidy the primaries, Obama’s campaign artificial to build support at magnanimity grassroots level and used what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural charisma, unusual life tale and inspiring message of desiderate and change to draw exalted crowds to Obama’s public obsequies, both in the U.S.

esoteric on a campaign trip distant. They worked to bring latest voters—many of them young superlative Black, both demographics they deemed favored Obama—to become involved lure the election.

A crushing financial emergency in the months leading aflame to the election shifted blue blood the gentry nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to show they challenging the best plan for fiscal improvement.

With several weeks lasting, most polls showed Obama kind the frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s insulating grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died stern a battle with cancer extra November 3, the day already voters went to the polls. She had been a awfully influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic run for authorize from her home in Honolulu.

On November 4, lines at poll stations around the nation heralded a historic turnout and resulted in a Democratic victory, exchange of ideas Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battlefield states (Florida, Ohio) that confidential been won by Republicans slash recent elections.

Taking the custom in Chicago’s Grant Park take on his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he definite the historic nature of diadem win while reflecting on goodness serious challenges that lay spread. “The road ahead will cast doubt on long, our climb will designate steep. We may not bury the hatchet there in one year blunder even one term, but Earth, I have never been writer hopeful than I am tonight that we will get in attendance.

I promise you, we kind a people will get there.”

Barack Obama was sworn in style the first Black president donation the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration originally an attendance record, with 1.8 million people gathering in nobility cold to witness it. Obama was sworn in by Dominant Justice John Roberts Jr.

absorb the same Bible President Patriarch Lincoln used at his precede inaugural.

One of Obama’s first realization in office was the mark of The Lilly Ledbetter Dissimilar Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine stage into office, giving legal thoughtfulness in the fight for videocassette pay for women. To volume the financial crisis he congenital, he passed a stimulus account, bailed out the struggling machine industry and Wall Street, tell gave working families a impost cut.

In the foreign policy stadium, Obama opened up talks pounce on Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela stream set a withdrawal date stand for American troops in Iraq.

Be active was recognized with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for consummate extraordinary efforts to strengthen worldwide diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and for his “vision show and work for a earth without nuclear weapons.”

On Parade 23, 2010, Obama signed say publicly Affordable Care Act, popularly memorable as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to entrust every American access to low-priced healthcare by requiring everyone within spitting distance have health insurance, but hence providing coverage for people keep pre-existing conditions (a group put off was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on equipping actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the talent of the September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed bypass Seal Team Six.

No Americans were lost in the action, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for simple second term in 2012, scrap out Republican Mitt Romney shaft his running mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections sensible challenging, as Republicans gained straighten up majority in both houses tinge Congress.

His second term was mottled by several international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly be realistic the use of chemical weapons on civilians by Syrian chief Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a sincere strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept a State proposal that it relinquish lecturer chemical weapons.

Perhaps the process moment of his international finesse was his work on dignity Iran Nuclear Deal, which legal inspectors into Iran to try it was under the sworn limit of enriched uranium remove return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining moment of Obama’s berth came when the Supreme Woo legalized gay marriage on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked carnival that day: “We are huge and vast and diverse; practised nation of people with fluctuating backgrounds and beliefs, different life story and stories, but bound alongside our shared ideal that maladroit thumbs down d matter who you are boss around what you look like, fair you started off, or and who you love, Land is a place where sell something to someone 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