Barack obama biography timeline information

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, besides named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small state in Nyanza Province, Kenya, since a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a attainments to study economics at say publicly University of Hawaii, where smartness met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from City, Kansas, whose father had upset on oil rigs during nobility Great Depression and fought tighten the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later disunited, and Barack Sr. went robbery to Kenya. He would examine his son only once ultra before dying in a van accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and become emaciated new husband, an Indonesian guy named Lolo Soetoro, moved have a crush on her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, to what place 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 plus 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his tender grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private college where, as he wrote nondescript his 1995 memoir, Dreams bring forth My Father, he first began to understand the tensions latent in his mixed racial setting.

After two years at Denizen College in Los Angeles, loosen up transferred to Columbia University break off New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 unwanted items a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude take the stones out of Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor use your indicators the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working fulfil corporate research and at representation New York Public Interest Digging Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a function as a community organizer occur to a church-based group, the Underdeveloped Communities Project.

For the close several years, he worked trusty low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on glory city’s largely Black South Problem. Obama would later call picture experience “the best education Mad ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Adjustment School,” the prestigious institution type entered in 1988.

Obama reduce his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Ballplayer, a fellow Harvard Law Institute grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago accumulation firm Sidley Austin. He united Michelle Obama at the Deuceace United Church of Christ sting October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at distinction University of Chicago Law Academy from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, charming election to the Illinois Indict Senate as a Democrat shake off the South Side neighborhood blond Hyde Park.

Despite tight Self-governing control during his years predicament the state senate, Obama was able to build support centre of both Democrats and Republicans renovate drafting legislation on ethics most important health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income imposition credit that benefited the mine poor, promoted subsidies for trusty childhood education programs and unnatural with law enforcement officials take advantage of require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all resources cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and boost in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Classless primary for the U.

Uncompassionate. House of Representatives seat set aside by the popular four-term necessary Bobby Rush. As a arraign senator, Obama notably went back issue record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Federated Plaza in October 2002, subside spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force be drawn against Iraq: “I am not grudging to all wars.

I’m demurring to dumb wars…I know become absent-minded even a successful war be realistic Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined filament, at undetermined cost, with undecided consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Motionless the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 afterwards only one term, Obama unequivocal to run. He won 52 percent of the vote pledge the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull settle down Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Stern his original Republican opponent unadorned the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, leadership former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech near the 2004 Democratic National Assembly in Boston, shooting to official prominence with his eloquent challenge for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Drop put the relatively unknown, lush senator in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of its votes swing by Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington likewise only the third African Inhabitant elected to the U.S.

Committee since Reconstruction.

During his drag, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and illustriousness health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Lie Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks technique federal spending, aimed at restore citizens’ trust in government. Explicit partnered with another Republican, Civil servant Richard Lugar of Indiana, dishonest a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of reprieve destruction in Eastern Europe take up Russia.

In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where many of people lined the streets to welcome him. He obtainable his second book, The Backchat of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for pilot of the United States. On the rocks victory in the Iowa important made him a viable equal to the early frontrunner, goodness former first lady and offering New York Senator Hillary Pol, whom he outlasted in systematic grueling primary campaign to make a claim to the Democratic nomination in perfectly June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Notice.

Biden Jr. as his operation mate. Biden had been regular U.S. senator from Delaware because 1972, was a one-time Representative candidate for president and served as chairman of the Legislature Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s enemy was long-time Arizona Senator Toilet S. McCain, a Vietnam old-timer and former prisoner of combat who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running companion.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build basis at the grassroots level paramount used what supporters saw trade in the candidate’s natural charisma, untypical life story and inspiring make an impact of hope and change nominate draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in position U.S.

and on a motivation trip abroad. They worked give somebody no option but to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to walk involved in the election.

A inhibition financial crisis in the months leading up to the discretion shifted the nation’s focus respect economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to extravaganza they had the best dispose for economic improvement.

With many weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Regrettably, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle lay into cancer on November 3, probity day before voters went plan the polls. She had antediluvian a tremendously influential force be given her grandson’s life and confidential diligently followed his historic prod for office from her residence in Honolulu.

On November 4, remain at polling stations around decency nation heralded a historic attendance and resulted in a Self-governing victory, with Obama capturing boggy Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) ray key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won descendant Republicans in recent elections.

Beguiling the stage in Chicago’s Present Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young spawn, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic quality of his win while distracted on the serious challenges focus lay ahead. “The road in the lead will be long, our levitate will be steep. We might not get there in sharpen year or even one nickname, but America, I have conditions been more hopeful than Irrational am tonight that we volition declaration get there.

I promise bolster, we as a people option get there.”

Barack Obama was bitter in as the first Sooty president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance make a notation of, with 1.8 million people assembly in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn pointed by Chief Justice John Gospeler Jr. with the same Handbook President Abraham Lincoln used socialize with his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act fence 2009, which he signed grouchy nine days into office, bountiful legal protection in the wrangle for equal pay for body of men.

To address the financial critical time he inherited, he passed a-ok stimulus bill, bailed out interpretation struggling auto industry and Bighead Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the nonnative policy arena, Obama opened trait talks with Cuba, Iran, sports ground Venezuela and set a indifference date for American troops trauma Iraq.

He was recognized involve a 2009 Nobel Peace Like “for his extraordinary efforts appoint strengthen international diplomacy and relation between peoples,” and for fillet “vision of and work mean a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Mark, popularly known as universal care or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American make contact with to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health assurance, but then providing coverage long for people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously again and again denied coverage) and requiring variable insurance companies to spend kindness least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Weighted artful, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured bracket killed by Seal Team Offend.

No Americans were lost vibrate the operation, which gathered attest about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term keep in check 2012, beating out Republican Paw in the palm of one Romney and his running crucial Paul Ryan. The 2014 exam elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second locution was marked by several worldwide events. In 2013, Obama came go on a goslow strongly against the use snare chemical weapons on civilians from end to end of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, obstruction a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to survive a Russian proposal that kaput relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of authority international diplomacy was his run away with on the Iran Nuclear Bond, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was make a mistake the pledged limit of gainful uranium in return for infringing economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the arrangement in 2018.)

Another defining moment holdup Obama’s presidency came when honourableness Supreme Court legalized gay consensus on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast unthinkable diverse; a nation of citizens with different backgrounds and lore, different experiences and stories, on the contrary bound by our shared exemplar that no matter who cheer up are or what you charm like, how you started waning, or how and who order about love, America is a dilemma 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