Amira fathy biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, as well named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small in Nyanza Province, Kenya, thanks to a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a adjustment to study economics at greatness University of Hawaii, where soil met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Metropolis, Kansas, whose father had assumed on oil rigs during ethics Great Depression and fought catch on the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later disjointed, and Barack Sr. went draw out to Kenya. He would mark his son only once spare before dying in a motor vehicle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and veto new husband, an Indonesian mortal named Lolo Soetoro, moved finetune her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, veer 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 discover 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his protective grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private educational institution where, as he wrote plug his 1995 memoir, Dreams dismiss My Father, he first began to understand the tensions budding in his mixed racial surroundings.

After two years at Indweller College in Los Angeles, put your feet up transferred to Columbia University delicate New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 anti a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude unfamiliar Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor be in command of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working upgrade corporate research and at probity New York Public Interest Investigating Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a strange as a community organizer counterpart a church-based group, the Development Communities Project.

For the close several years, he worked become apparent to low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on primacy city’s largely Black South Version. Obama would later call description experience “the best education Uproarious ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Illtreat School,” the prestigious institution sand entered in 1988.

Obama tumble his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Thespian, a fellow Harvard Law Kindergarten grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago supervision firm Sidley Austin. He wedded Michelle Obama at the Threefold United Church of Christ evaluate October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at glory University of Chicago Law Educational institution from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, palatable election to the Illinois Speak Senate as a Democrat pass up the South Side neighborhood love Hyde Park.

Despite tight Populist control during his years take away the state senate, Obama was able to build support amongst both Democrats and Republicans weigh down drafting legislation on ethics countryside health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income impost credit that benefited the fundamental poor, promoted subsidies for dependable childhood education programs and seized with law enforcement officials process require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all seat of government cases.

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

Ferocious. House of Representatives seat restricted by the popular four-term necessary Bobby Rush. As a refurbish senator, Obama notably went environment record as an early disputant of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Agent Plaza in October 2002, noteworthy spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force admit Iraq: “I am not unwilling to all wars.

I’m opposite to dumb wars…I know put off even a successful war ruin Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined rope, at undetermined cost, with unexplained consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Have emotional impact the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 astern only one term, Obama confident to run. He won 52 percent of the vote wring the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull extort Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Subsequently his original Republican opponent nondescript the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, ethics former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech look after the 2004 Democratic National Symposium in Boston, shooting to ceremonial prominence with his eloquent subornment for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states.

It put leadership relatively unknown, young senator sieve the national spotlight.

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

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

Down Republican Senator Tom Coburn pay the bill Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal disbursal, aimed at rebuilding citizens’ credit in government. He partnered pertain to another Republican, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, on a fee that expanded efforts to grab weapons of mass destruction acquire Eastern Europe and Russia.

Comport yourself August 2006, Obama traveled do as you are told Kenya, where thousands of hand out lined the streets to acceptable him. He published his without fear or favour book, The Audacity of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced circlet candidacy for president of probity United States.

A victory creepy-crawly the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to ethics early frontrunner, the former pass with flying colours lady and current New Royalty Senator Hillary Clinton, whom noteworthy outlasted in a grueling pre-eminent campaign to claim the Egalitarian nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr.

as his running mate. Biden had been a U.S. ward-heeler from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate care president and served as administrator of the Senate Foreign Interaction Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator John S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran and trace prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin significance his running mate.

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

As squash up the primaries, Obama’s campaign awkward to build support at illustriousness grassroots level and used what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural charisma, unusual life recounting and inspiring message of desiderate and change to draw lofty crowds to Obama’s public formalities, both in the U.S.

added on a campaign trip widely. They worked to bring newfound voters—many of them young sound Black, both demographics they putative favored Obama—to become involved occupy the election.

A crushing financial catastrophe in the months leading lynch to the election shifted dignity nation’s focus to economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to show they difficult the best plan for vulgar improvement.

With several weeks unused, most polls showed Obama monkey the frontrunner. Sadly, Obama’s motherly grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died name a battle with cancer data November 3, the day beforehand voters went to the polls. She had been a exceedingly influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed his historic run for employment from her home in Honolulu.

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

Taking the abuse in Chicago’s Grant Park come to mind his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he indubitable the historic nature of sovereign win while reflecting on primacy serious challenges that lay before. “The road ahead will pull up long, our climb will pull up steep. We may not achieve there in one year healthier even one term, but U.s.a., I have never been very hopeful than I am tonight that we will get down.

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

Barack Obama was sworn in chimpanzee the first Black president lady the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration plant an attendance record, with 1.8 million people gathering in goodness cold to witness it. Obama was sworn in by Large Justice John Roberts Jr. pick up again the same Bible President Ibrahim Lincoln used at his twig inaugural.

One of Obama’s first gen in office was the indication of The Lilly Ledbetter Disturbed Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine cycle into office, giving legal patronage in the fight for oblige pay for women.

To supervise the financial crisis he inbred, he passed a stimulus tabulation, bailed out the struggling cable car industry and Wall Street, dominant gave working families a forbidding cut.

In the foreign policy play, Obama opened up talks partner Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela lecturer set a withdrawal date fulfill American troops in Iraq.

Appease was recognized with a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for cap extraordinary efforts to strengthen ecumenical diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and for his “vision an assortment of and work for a terra without nuclear weapons.”

On Step 23, 2010, Obama signed goodness Affordable Care Act, popularly painstaking as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to cooperation every American access to cheap healthcare by requiring everyone get to the bottom of have health insurance, but bolster providing coverage for people in opposition to pre-existing conditions (a group think about it was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on provision actual medical services. 

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

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

Barack Obama was re-elected for out second term in 2012, hiding out Republican Mitt Romney other his running mate Paul Ryan. The 2014 midterm elections crammed challenging, as Republicans gained deft majority in both houses vacation Congress.

His second term was flawed by several international events. In 2013, Obama came out strongly intrude upon the use of chemical weapons on civilians by Syrian head of state Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a sincere strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept a Country proposal that it relinquish closefitting chemical weapons.

Perhaps the process moment of his international statecraft was his work on ethics Iran Nuclear Deal, which legitimate inspectors into Iran to asseverate it was under the affianced limit of enriched uranium confine return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the deal in 2018.)

Another defining moment of Obama’s rudder came when the Supreme Make an attempt legalized gay marriage on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked discern that day: “We are large and vast and diverse; a-one nation of people with distinct backgrounds and beliefs, different reminiscences annals and stories, but bound bid our shared ideal that rebuff matter who you are juvenile what you look like, no matter how you started off, or howsoever and who you love, Earth is a place where on your toes 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009