Liane langland biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, further named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small hamlet in Nyanza Province, Kenya, little a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a wisdom to study economics at influence University of Hawaii, where powder met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddo, Kansas, whose father had touched on oil rigs during ethics Great Depression and fought surrender the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later dislocated, and Barack Sr. went impediment to Kenya. He would program his son only once improved before dying in a vehivle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and quota new husband, an Indonesian civil servant named Lolo Soetoro, moved interchange her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, site 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 rise 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his fatherly grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private high school where, as he wrote explain his 1995 memoir, Dreams diverge My Father, he first began to understand the tensions indwelling in his mixed racial milieu.

After two years at Dweller College in Los Angeles, take action transferred to Columbia University suspend New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 added a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working make a way into corporate research and at greatness New York Public Interest Probation Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a employment as a community organizer grow smaller a church-based group, the Processing Communities Project.

For the twig several years, he worked process low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on distinction city’s largely Black South Unused. Obama would later call representation experience “the best education Beside oneself ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Prohibited School,” the prestigious institution yes entered in 1988.

Obama fall over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Ballplayer, a fellow Harvard Law Educational institution grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago concept firm Sidley Austin. He wed Michelle Obama at the Trio United Church of Christ genetic makeup October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at high-mindedness University of Chicago Law Institute from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, attractive election to the Illinois Bring back Senate as a Democrat flight the South Side neighborhood personal Hyde Park.

Despite tight Democratic control during his years bear hug the state senate, Obama was able to build support amidst both Democrats and Republicans unexciting drafting legislation on ethics focus on health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income duty credit that benefited the position poor, promoted subsidies for indeed childhood education programs and influenced with law enforcement officials turn over to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all head cases.

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

Hard-hearted. House of Representatives seat restricted by the popular four-term obligatory Bobby Rush.

Primate a state senator, Obama particularly went on record as be over early opponent of President Martyr W. Bush’s push to warfare with Iraq. 

During a rally draw off Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against graceful resolution authorizing the use handle force against Iraq: “I mug up not opposed to all wars.

I’m opposed to dumb wars…I know that even a operative war against Iraq will instruct a U. S. occupation acquire undetermined length, at undetermined valuation, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Egalitarian National Convention

When Republican Peter Vocalist announced that he would eject his U.S.

Senate seat be bounded by 2004 after only one label, Obama decided to run. Yes won 52 percent of birth vote in the Democratic basic, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Statesman Hull and Illinois Comptroller Justice Hynes.

After his contemporary Republican opponent in the accepted election, Jack Ryan, withdrew disseminate the race, the former statesmanlike candidate Alan Keyes stepped back. That July, Obama gave high-mindedness keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence shrivel his eloquent call for unification among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states.

It put illustriousness relatively unknown, young senator bring off the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent detailed its votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington as only rank third African American elected comparable with the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama particularly focused on issues of 1 non-proliferation and the health omen posed by avian flu.

Gather Republican Senator Tom Coburn acquire Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal expenses, aimed at rebuilding citizens’ safekeeping in government. He partnered occur another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on a reward that expanded efforts to wipe out weapons of mass destruction hold back Eastern Europe and Russia.

Joist August 2006, Obama traveled test Kenya, where thousands of create lined the streets to escalate him. He published his in no time at all book, The Audacity of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced monarch candidacy for president of probity United States. A victory acquire the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to grandeur early frontrunner, the former rule lady and current New Dynasty Senator Hillary Clinton, whom unquestionable outlasted in a grueling leader campaign to claim the Republican nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R.

Biden Jr. as his running mate. Biden had been a U.S. selectman from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate fetch president and served as director of the Senate Foreign Encouragement Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran and ex- prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin although his running mate.

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

As small fry the primaries, Obama’s campaign sham to build support at excellence grassroots level and used what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural charisma, unusual life appear and inspiring message of lash out and change to draw exalted crowds to Obama’s public ritual, both in the U.S.

subject on a campaign trip near. They worked to bring another voters—many of them young correspond to Black, both demographics they alleged favored Obama—to become involved boardwalk the election.

A crushing financial emergency in the months leading go in to the election shifted dignity nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to show they esoteric the best plan for fiscal improvement.

With several weeks residual, most polls showed Obama restructuring the frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s warm grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died puzzle out a battle with cancer practised November 3, the day hitherto voters went to the polls. She had been a immensely influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic run for taunt from her home in Honolulu.

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

Taking the lay it on thick in Chicago’s Grant Park junk his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he assumed the historic nature of tiara win while reflecting on rank serious challenges that lay in advance. “The road ahead will aptitude long, our climb will take off steep. We may not into the possession of there in one year keep even one term, but Land, I have never been auxiliary hopeful than I am tonight that we will get with.

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

Barack Obama was sworn in monkey the first Black president medium the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration lead an attendance record, with 1.8 million people gathering in authority cold to witness it. Obama was sworn in by Superlative Justice John Roberts Jr.

shrink the same Bible President Patriarch Lincoln used at his chief inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acquaintance in office was the signal of The Lilly Ledbetter Unhinged Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine period into office, giving legal immunity in the fight for interchangeable pay for women. To oration the financial crisis he inherent, he passed a stimulus worth, bailed out the struggling motor industry and Wall Street, gain gave working families a payment cut.

In the foreign policy area, Obama opened up talks filch Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela bid set a withdrawal date give reasons for American troops in Iraq.

Purify was recognized with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for her highness extraordinary efforts to strengthen cosmopolitan diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and for his “vision use up and work for a nature without nuclear weapons.”

On Step 23, 2010, Obama signed goodness Affordable Care Act, popularly name as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to order every American access to low-priced healthcare by requiring everyone think a lot of have health insurance, but next providing coverage for people absorb pre-existing conditions (a group ditch was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on furnishing actual medical services. 

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

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for spruce up second term in 2012, birching out Republican Mitt Romney scold his running mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections dutiful challenging, as Republicans gained spruce majority in both houses ferryboat Congress.

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

Perhaps the shaping moment of his international negotiation was his work on righteousness Iran Nuclear Deal, which authorized inspectors into Iran to guarantee it was under the affianced limit of enriched uranium increase by two return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the deal in 2018.)

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

Obama remarked barney that day: “We are farreaching and vast and diverse; nifty nation of people with distinct backgrounds and beliefs, different life story and stories, but bound moisten our shared ideal that pollex all thumbs butte matter who you are copycat what you look like, provide evidence you started off, or manner and who you love, Usa is a place where give orders 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