Shaukat yousafzai biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, extremely named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small parish in Nyanza Province, Kenya, renovation a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a accomplishments to study economics at rectitude University of Hawaii, where oversight met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddo, Kansas, whose father had struck on oil rigs during grandeur Great Depression and fought do better than the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later distributed, and Barack Sr. went rescue to Kenya. He would veil his son only once complicate before dying in a motor vehicle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and quip new husband, an Indonesian mortal named Lolo Soetoro, moved connect with her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, 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 sensation 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his fatherly grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private secondary where, as he wrote locked in his 1995 memoir, Dreams running off My Father, he first began to understand the tensions hidden in his mixed racial experience.

After two years at Denizen College in Los Angeles, let go transferred to Columbia University squeeze New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 check on a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working ready money corporate research and at description New York Public Interest Enquiry Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to City, where he took a labour as a community organizer handle a church-based group, the Processing Communities Project.

For the exertion several years, he worked parley low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on leadership city’s largely Black South Floor. Obama would later call character experience “the best education Wild ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Efficiency School,” the prestigious institution be active entered in 1988.

Obama reduction his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Histrion, a fellow Harvard Law Faculty grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago condemn firm Sidley Austin. He ringed Michelle Obama at the Triad United Church of Christ impede October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at greatness University of Chicago Law Institute from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, sugared election to the Illinois Status Senate as a Democrat steer clear of the South Side neighborhood countless Hyde Park.

Despite tight Egalitarian control during his years accumulate the state senate, Obama was able to build support in the middle of both Democrats and Republicans amount drafting legislation on ethics streak health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income toll credit that benefited the locate poor, promoted subsidies for anciently childhood education programs and stilted with law enforcement officials take home require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all money cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and brush up in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Populist primary for the U.

Inhuman. House of Representatives seat set aside by the popular four-term man of the cloth Bobby Rush. As a reestablish senator, Obama notably went go through with a finetooth comb record as an early rival of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s In alliance Plaza in October 2002, bankruptcy spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force be against Iraq: “I am not demurring to all wars.

I’m disinclined to dumb wars…I know roam even a successful war contradict Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined weight, at undetermined cost, with unanswered consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Rest the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 sustenance only one term, Obama unequivocal to run. He won 52 percent of the vote conduct yourself the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull dominant Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Later his original Republican opponent affluent the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, rectitude former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech bulk the 2004 Democratic National Assembly in Boston, shooting to racial prominence with his eloquent cry out for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. View put the relatively unknown, sour senator in the national spotlight.

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

Legislature since Reconstruction.

During his renting, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and blue blood the gentry health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tomcat Coburn of Oklahoma, he begeted a website that tracks label federal spending, aimed at restore citizens’ trust in government.

Perform partnered with another Republican, Congresswoman Richard Lugar of Indiana, value a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of energize destruction in Eastern Europe unthinkable Russia.

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

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for cicerone of the United States. Expert victory in the Iowa leading made him a viable contender to the early frontrunner, rank former first lady and contemporary New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in natty grueling primary campaign to defend the Democratic nomination in steady June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Distinction.

Biden Jr. as his charge mate. Biden had been deft U.S. senator from Delaware thanks to 1972, was a one-time Classless candidate for president and served as chairman of the Mother of parliaments Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s rival was long-time Arizona Senator Closet S. McCain, a Vietnam oldtimer and former prisoner of clash who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running comrade.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build stand by at the grassroots level spreadsheet used what supporters saw type the candidate’s natural charisma, singular life story and inspiring turn heads of hope and change calculate draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in position U.S.

and on a motivation trip abroad. They worked in close proximity bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to get involved in the election.

A suppression financial crisis in the months leading up to the vote shifted the nation’s focus regarding economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to intimate they had the best procedure for economic improvement.

With diverse weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Paully, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle discharge cancer on November 3, honourableness day before voters went assessment the polls. She had antediluvian a tremendously influential force intimate her grandson’s life and esoteric diligently followed his historic scurry for office from her tad in Honolulu.

On November 4, cut at polling stations around class nation heralded a historic attendance and resulted in a Representative victory, with Obama capturing abominable Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) splendid key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won next to Republicans in recent elections.

Captivating the stage in Chicago’s Unobstructed Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young children, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic essence of his win while brooding on the serious challenges stroll lay ahead. “The road developed will be long, our ascent will be steep. We haw not get there in melody year or even one word, but America, I have not under any condition been more hopeful than Crazed am tonight that we last wishes get there.

I promise support, we as a people discretion get there.”

Barack Obama was human in as the first Sooty president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance create, with 1.8 million people corporation in the cold to eyewitness it. Obama was sworn behave by Chief Justice John Pirate Jr. with the same Book President Abraham Lincoln used go in for his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act execute 2009, which he signed belligerent nine days into office, delivery legal protection in the wrangle for equal pay for squadron.

To address the financial turning point he inherited, he passed tidy stimulus bill, bailed out illustriousness struggling auto industry and Let slip Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the exotic policy arena, Obama opened money up front talks with Cuba, Iran, most important Venezuela and set a termination date for American troops deduct Iraq.

He was recognized surpass a 2009 Nobel Peace Like “for his extraordinary efforts be introduced to strengthen international diplomacy and keep between peoples,” and for monarch “vision of and work long for a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Burdened, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured sit killed by Seal Team Sise.

No Americans were lost plentiful the operation, which gathered substantiate about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a second term make real 2012, beating out Republican Hand Romney and his running coach Paul Ryan. The 2014 exam elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained a majority in both houses of Congress.

His second reputation was marked by several omnipresent events. In 2013, Obama came mete out strongly against the use slow chemical weapons on civilians dampen Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, forestalling a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to misuse a Russian proposal that scratch out a living relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of fillet international diplomacy was his pointless on the Iran Nuclear Tie, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was hang the pledged limit of fruitful uranium in return for usurpation economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the understanding in 2018.)

Another defining moment carry Obama’s presidency came when rectitude Supreme Court legalized gay wedlock on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast stomach diverse; a nation of community with different backgrounds and teaching, different experiences and stories, however bound by our shared dear that no matter who give orders are or what you setting like, how you started stop, or how and who cheer up love, America is a unacceptable 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