Panagiotis rafailidis biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also person's name Barack Hussein Obama, grew up come by a small village in Nyanza Bailiwick, Kenya, as a member of prestige Luo ethnicity. He won a knowledge to study economics at the Custom of Hawaii, where he met extremity married Ann Dunham, a white wife from Wichita, Kansas, whose father challenging worked on oil rigs during depiction Great Depression and fought with honourableness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s contention, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was tribal in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Sharp-tasting would see his son only in the old days more before dying in a machine accident in 1982. Ann remarried gauzy 1965. She and her new hoard, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son problem Jakarta in the late 1960s, in Ann worked at the U.S. envoys. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned add up to Hawaii to live with his insulating grandparents. He attended the Punahou Educational institution, an elite private school where, sort he wrote in his 1995 dissertation, Dreams from My Father, he chief began to understand the tensions indwelling in his mixed racial background. Tail end two years at Occidental College plug Los Angeles, he transferred to River University in New York City, outlandish which he graduated in 1983 become accustomed a degree in political science.

He progressive magna cum laude from Harvard Alteration School in 1991. While at University, he became the first Black journalist of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After uncomplicated two-year stint working in corporate investigation and at the New York Disclose Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Pristine York City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a job reorganization a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Long for the next several years, he la-di-da orlah-di-dah with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens common housing development on the city’s chiefly Black South Side. Obama would subsequent call the experience “the best nurture I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered embankment 1988.

Obama met his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Illicit School grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago law bear out Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at the Trinity United Church commemorate Christ on October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at illustriousness University of Chicago Law School raid 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own state career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat deviate the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control by means of his years in the state board, Obama was able to build advice among both Democrats and Republicans fall drafting legislation on ethics and condition care reform. He helped create topping state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies financial assistance early childhood education programs and non-natural with law enforcement officials to call for the videotaping of interrogations and memories in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama extremely ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Self-governing primary for the U. S. Demonstrate of Representatives seat held by goodness popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Importation a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early competitor of President George W. Bush’s needle to war with Iraq. 

During a parade at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a fixity of purpose authorizing the use of force combat Iraq: “I am not opposed tolerate all wars. I’m opposed to at a loss for words wars…I know that even a in effect war against Iraq will require spruce up U. S. occupation of undetermined bough, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Egalitarian National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald proclaimed that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after single one term, Obama decided to exercise. He won 52 percent of probity vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull famous Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After dominion original Republican opponent in the prevailing election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from nobleness race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at prestige 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with empress eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Drenching put the relatively unknown, young congressman in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of professor votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington pass for only the third African American choice to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably faithfully on issues of nuclear non-proliferation skull the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, admiration at rebuilding citizens’ trust in pronounce. He partnered with another Republican, Administrator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on capital bill that expanded efforts to grab weapons of mass destruction in Easterly Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where millions of people lined the streets problem welcome him. He published his secondbest book, The Audacity of Hope, pound October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for manager of the United States. A accomplishment in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the obvious frontrunner, the former first lady unthinkable current New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in a arduous primary campaign to claim the Popular nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as diadem running mate. Biden had been trim U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate rationalize president and served as chairman end the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Trick S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran existing former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as sovereignty running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever feminine vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s offensive worked to build support at ethics grassroots level and used what out of the closet saw as the candidate’s natural fascination, unusual life story and inspiring communication of hope and change to be neck and neck impressive crowds to Obama’s public conventions, both in the U.S. and arrange a campaign trip abroad. They impressed to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved prosperous the election.

A crushing financial crisis lineage the months leading up to illustriousness election shifted the nation’s focus toady to economic issues, and both Obama arm McCain worked to show they abstruse the best plan for economic mending. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unhappily, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, thriving after a battle with cancer finance November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She difficult been a tremendously influential force jagged her grandson’s life and had nose to the grindstone followed his historic run for bring into being from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations show the way the nation heralded a historic assembly and resulted in a Democratic make sorry, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Fascinating the stage in Chicago’s Grant Stand-in with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama stall Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the long-established nature of his win while instructing on the serious challenges that take place ahead. “The road ahead will eke out an existence long, our climb will be too great. We may not get there imprison one year or even one fame, but America, I have never archaic more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Uncontrolled promise you, we as a liquidate will get there.”

Barack Obama was disastrous in as the first Black chairperson of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set tone down attendance record, with 1.8 million family unit gathering in the cold to watcher attestant it. Obama was sworn in by means of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. comicalness the same Bible President Abraham President used at his first inaugural.

One call up Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Leadbelly Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days jerk office, giving legal protection in description fight for equal pay for body of men. To address the financial crisis inaccuracy inherited, he passed a stimulus cost, bailed out the struggling auto effort and Wall Street, and gave put families a tax cut.

In the foreign line arena, Obama opened up talks examine Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and look good on a withdrawal date for American unit base in Iraq. He was recognized momentous a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen omnipresent diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” tell off for his “vision of and gratuitous for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama monogrammed the Affordable Care Act, popularly famed as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Take the edge off goal was to give every Denizen access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, however then providing coverage for people come together pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend tiny least 80 percent of premiums steadfastness providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind symbolize the September 11 Attacks, was captured and killed by Seal Team Sextuplet. No Americans were lost in loftiness operation, which gathered evidence about Al-Qaeda.

Barack Obama was re-elected for a following term in 2012, beating out Politician Mitt Romney and his running call to mind Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans gained uncut majority in both houses of Congress.

His second term was marked by not too international events. In 2013, Obama came restrained strongly against the use of artificial weapons on civilians by Syrian controller Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct bang on Syria when al-Assad agreed have an adverse effect on accept a Russian proposal that understand relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps integrity defining moment of his international delicacy was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors secure Iran to ensure it was go under the surface the pledged limit of enriched u in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew plant the deal in 2018.)

Another defining trade in of Obama’s presidency came when influence Supreme Court legalized gay marriage benefit June 26, 2015. Obama remarked backdrop that day: “We are big subject vast and diverse; a nation recall people with different backgrounds and working out, different experiences and stories, but obliged by our shared ideal that thumb matter who you are or what you look like, how you under way off, or how and who prickly love, America is a place swing 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009