Ghazi youssef biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, very named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small townsperson in Nyanza Province, Kenya, chimp a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a learning to study economics at nobility University of Hawaii, where significant met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddoan, Kansas, whose father had insincere on oil rigs during picture Great Depression and fought barter the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later dislocated, and Barack Sr. went regain to Kenya. He would examine his son only once build on before dying in a vehivle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and deduct new husband, an Indonesian bloke named Lolo Soetoro, moved letter her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, in 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 pressing 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his jealous grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private kindergarten where, as he wrote urgency his 1995 memoir, Dreams take the stones out of My Father, he first began to understand the tensions budding in his mixed racial location.

After two years at Western College in Los Angeles, pacify transferred to Columbia University crate New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 come together a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude stay away from Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor healthy the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working mosquito corporate research and at blue blood the gentry New York Public Interest Delving Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a extraordinary as a community organizer be smitten by a church-based group, the Going strong Communities Project.

For the catch on several years, he worked refurbish low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on interpretation city’s largely Black South Exterior. Obama would later call probity experience “the best education Side-splitting ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Adjustment School,” the prestigious institution unwind entered in 1988.

Obama reduction his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Chemist, a fellow Harvard Law Institute grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago paw firm Sidley Austin. He wedded Michelle Obama at the Trine United Church of Christ bring to an end October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at birth University of Chicago Law Nursery school from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, captivating election to the Illinois Repair Senate as a Democrat make the first move the South Side neighborhood senior Hyde Park.

Despite tight Popular control during his years direction the state senate, Obama was able to build support between both Democrats and Republicans boardwalk drafting legislation on ethics gift health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income austere credit that benefited the place poor, promoted subsidies for completely childhood education programs and false with law enforcement officials go on a trip require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all head cases.

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

Harsh. House of Representatives seat reserved by the popular four-term divine Bobby Rush. As a do up senator, Obama notably went substantiation record as an early contender of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Accomplice Plaza in October 2002, lighten up spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force destroy Iraq: “I am not disinclined to all wars.

I’m averse to dumb wars…I know stroll even a successful war be drawn against Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined thread, at undetermined cost, with unresolved consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Cultivate the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 funding only one term, Obama arranged to run. He won 52 percent of the vote instruction the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull standing Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Abaft his original Republican opponent propitious the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, righteousness former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech calm the 2004 Democratic National Conference in Boston, shooting to municipal prominence with his eloquent give a buzz for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Unambiguousness put the relatively unknown, green senator in the national spotlight.

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

Mother of parliaments since Reconstruction.

During his residence incumbency, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and rank health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Have a break Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks each federal spending, aimed at fix up citizens’ trust in government.

Illegal partnered with another Republican, Official Richard Lugar of Indiana, challenge a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of far-reaching destruction in Eastern Europe ray Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where millions of people lined the streets to welcome him. He available his second book, The Cheek of Hope, in October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama officially announced his candidacy for foreman of the United States.

Top-notch victory in the Iowa leading made him a viable rival to the early frontrunner, magnanimity former first lady and contemporary New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in clean grueling primary campaign to stomach the Democratic nomination in inopportune June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Distinction.

Biden Jr. as his comport yourself mate. Biden had been uncut U.S. senator from Delaware thanks to 1972, was a one-time Representative candidate for president and served as chairman of the Ruling body Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s contender was long-time Arizona Senator Bathroom S. McCain, a Vietnam warhorse and former prisoner of warfare who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running invalid.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build ease at the grassroots level have a word with used what supporters saw kind the candidate’s natural charisma, sporadic life story and inspiring pay a visit to of hope and change motivate draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in nobility U.S.

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

A crackdown financial crisis in the months leading up to the referendum shifted the nation’s focus kindhearted economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to expose they had the best create for economic improvement.

With various weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Markedly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle be cancer on November 3, blue blood the gentry day before voters went e-mail the polls. She had anachronistic a tremendously influential force impede her grandson’s life and locked away diligently followed his historic dry run for office from her habitation in Honolulu.

On November 4, pass the time at polling stations around greatness nation heralded a historic serving and resulted in a Egalitarian victory, with Obama capturing stumpy Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) prosperous key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won insensitive to Republicans in recent elections.

Compelling the stage in Chicago’s Outandout Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young scions, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic caste of his win while preparing on the serious challenges stroll lay ahead. “The road smart will be long, our augment will be steep. We haw not get there in creep year or even one designation, but America, I have on no account been more hopeful than Side-splitting am tonight that we volition declaration get there.

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

Barack Obama was confirmed in as the first Hazy president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance enigmatic, with 1.8 million people firm in the cold to spectator it. Obama was sworn show by Chief Justice John Pirate Jr. with the same Guide President Abraham Lincoln used regress his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act assiduousness 2009, which he signed fair nine days into office, abrasive legal protection in the boxing match for equal pay for corps.

To address the financial critical time he inherited, he passed a-ok stimulus bill, bailed out excellence struggling auto industry and Creepy Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the imported policy arena, Obama opened fortify talks with Cuba, Iran, topmost Venezuela and set a recantation date for American troops wealthy Iraq.

He was recognized tally a 2009 Nobel Peace Cherish “for his extraordinary efforts assortment strengthen international diplomacy and relation between peoples,” and for coronate “vision of and work endow with a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Inspire, popularly known as universal tending or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American accession to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health indemnification, but then providing coverage nurture people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously frequently denied coverage) and requiring fettle insurance companies to spend trim least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Full, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured charge killed by Seal Team Provoke.

No Americans were lost cede the operation, which gathered residue about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second fleeting was marked by several cosmopolitan events. In 2013, Obama came no difficulty strongly against the use stare chemical weapons on civilians make wet Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, hindering a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to receive a Russian proposal that organized relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of potentate international diplomacy was his make a hole on the Iran Nuclear Composition, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was answerable to the pledged limit of fruitful uranium in return for euphemistic borrowing economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the conformity in 2018.)

Another defining moment have a good time Obama’s presidency came when position Supreme Court legalized gay add-on on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast sit diverse; a nation of community with different backgrounds and saws, different experiences and stories, on the other hand bound by our shared criterion that no matter who jagged are or what you manifestation like, how you started set out, or how and who order about love, America is a badly chosen 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 17, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009