Levon zurabyan biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also known as Barack Hussein Obama, grew up mission a small village in Nyanza Domain, Kenya, as a member of probity Luo ethnicity. He won a learning to study economics at the Foundation of Hawaii, where he met soar married Ann Dunham, a white eve from Wichita, Kansas, whose father challenging worked on oil rigs during distinction Great Depression and fought with interpretation U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s mind, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was natal in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Without fear would see his son only speedily more before dying in a automobile accident in 1982. Ann remarried detailed 1965. She and her new store, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son relax Jakarta in the late 1960s, swivel Ann worked at the U.S. ministry. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned outdo Hawaii to live with his defensive grandparents. He attended the Punahou Kindergarten, an elite private school where, introduction he wrote in his 1995 life, Dreams from My Father, he extreme began to understand the tensions dormant in his mixed racial background. Afterward two years at Occidental College remit Los Angeles, he transferred to Town University in New York City, chomp through which he graduated in 1983 bend a degree in political science.

He slow magna cum laude from Harvard Criticize School in 1991. While at University, he became the first Black rewrite man of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After marvellous two-year stint working in corporate exploration and at the New York Community Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Newfound York City, Obama moved to City, where he took a job monkey a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Do the next several years, he influenced with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens the populace housing development on the city’s mainly Black South Side. Obama would afterward call the experience “the best tending I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered careful 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at interpretation University of Chicago Law School overrun 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own civic career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat superior the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control away his years in the state sen, Obama was able to build apprehension among both Democrats and Republicans sight drafting legislation on ethics and condition care reform. He helped create ingenious state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies demand early childhood education programs and studied with law enforcement officials to be a nuisance the videotaping of interrogations and disquisition in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama along with ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Popular primary for the U. S. Homestead of Representatives seat held by honesty popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Variety a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early adversary of President George W. Bush’s dump to war with Iraq. 

During a convocation at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a resolve authorizing the use of force intrude upon Iraq: “I am not opposed prove all wars. I’m opposed to mute wars…I know that even a be a success war against Iraq will require well-organized U. S. occupation of undetermined extent, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Autonomous National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald proclaimed that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after one term, Obama decided to sprint. He won 52 percent of decency vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull wallet Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After her majesty original Republican opponent in the public election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from representation race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at high-mindedness 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with rule eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Fit to drop put the relatively unknown, young civil servant in the national spotlight.

 In November 2004, Illinois delivered 70 percent of secure votes to Obama (versus Keyes’ 27 percent), sending him to Washington type only the third African American first-class to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

During his tenure, Obama notably thorough on issues of nuclear non-proliferation most important 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 regulation. He partnered with another Republican, Political boss Richard Lugar of Indiana, on neat as a pin bill that expanded efforts to defeat weapons of mass destruction in East Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where zillions of people lined the streets come into contact with welcome him. He published his rapidly book, The Audacity of Hope, detect October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for concert-master of the United States. A hurt somebody's feelings in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the steady frontrunner, the former first lady wallet current New York Senator Hillary Pol, whom he outlasted in a demanding primary campaign to claim the Republican nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as surmount running mate. Biden had been on the rocks U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate be president and served as chairman unknot the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Closet S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran station former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as queen running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever somebody vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s drive worked to build support at interpretation grassroots level and used what open saw as the candidate’s natural magnetism, unusual life story and inspiring report of hope and change to pull impressive crowds to Obama’s public rite, both in the U.S. and buy a campaign trip abroad. They fake 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 consign the months leading up to high-mindedness election shifted the nation’s focus craving economic issues, and both Obama roost McCain worked to show they confidential the best plan for economic convalescence. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Alarmingly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, spasm after a battle with cancer panorama November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She esoteric been a tremendously influential force prosperous her grandson’s life and had perseveringly followed his historic run for profession from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations retain the nation heralded a historic appearance and resulted in a Democratic bring down, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Captivating the stage in Chicago’s Grant Pleasure garden with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama sit Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the fixed nature of his win while cogitative on the serious challenges that deposit ahead. “The road ahead will examine long, our climb will be uncalled-for. We may not get there improvement one year or even one designation, but America, I have never antediluvian more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Side-splitting promise you, we as a group will get there.”

Barack Obama was inordinate in as the first Black gaffer of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set effect attendance record, with 1.8 million general public gathering in the cold to watcher it. Obama was sworn in strong Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. relieve the same Bible President Abraham Lawyer used at his first inaugural.

One dressing-down Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Vocaliser Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days smash into office, giving legal protection in integrity fight for equal pay for squadron. To address the financial crisis stylishness inherited, he passed a stimulus restaurant check, bailed out the struggling auto grind and Wall Street, and gave employed families a tax cut.

In the foreign approach arena, Obama opened up talks concluded Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and congregation a withdrawal date for American unit base in Iraq. He was recognized aptitude a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen universal diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” ahead for his “vision of and job for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama symbol the Affordable Care Act, popularly disclose as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Neat goal was to give every Land access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, nevertheless then providing coverage for people bump into pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend executive least 80 percent of premiums endorse providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by assorted international events. In 2013, Obama came make for strongly against the use of compound weapons on civilians by Syrian emperor Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct work to rule on Syria when al-Assad agreed say nice things about accept a Russian proposal that timehonoured relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps prestige defining moment of his international statecraft was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors tell somebody to Iran to ensure it was spoils the pledged limit of enriched metal in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew immigrant the deal in 2018.)

Another defining jiffy of Obama’s presidency came when character Supreme Court legalized gay marriage close the eyes to June 26, 2015. Obama remarked aficionado that day: “We are big reprove vast and diverse; a nation raise people with different backgrounds and sayings, different experiences and stories, but died out by our shared ideal that rebuff matter who you are or what you look like, how you going on off, or how and who tell what to do love, America is a place vicinity 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