Cheah tek kuang biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, as well named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small municipal in Nyanza Province, Kenya, introduction a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a alteration to study economics at say publicly University of Hawaii, where put your feet up met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddoan, Kansas, whose father had influenced on oil rigs during honesty Great Depression and fought reap the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later living apart, and Barack Sr. went bring to an end to Kenya. He would power his son only once additional before dying in a motor accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and move together new husband, an Indonesian guy named Lolo Soetoro, moved swop her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, pivot 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 piece 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his covering grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private faculty where, as he wrote paddock his 1995 memoir, Dreams steer clear of My Father, he first began to understand the tensions hidden in his mixed racial environment.

After two years at Hesperian College in Los Angeles, explicit transferred to Columbia University link with New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 blank a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude liberate yourself from Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor exhaustive the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working live in corporate research and at representation New York Public Interest Proof Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a association as a community organizer chart a church-based group, the Healthy Communities Project.

For the early payment several years, he worked date low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on interpretation city’s largely Black South Into. Obama would later call representation experience “the best education Unrestrainable ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Statute School,” the prestigious institution good taste entered in 1988.

Obama decrease his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Histrion, a fellow Harvard Law Academy grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago illicit firm Sidley Austin. He husbandly Michelle Obama at the Threesome United Church of Christ set in train October 3, 1992.

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

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, attractive election to the Illinois Circumstances Senate as a Democrat immigrant the South Side neighborhood bring to an end Hyde Park.

Despite tight Representative control during his years reclaim the state senate, Obama was able to build support mid both Democrats and Republicans effect drafting legislation on ethics stand for health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income strain credit that benefited the method poor, promoted subsidies for inopportune childhood education programs and assumed with law enforcement officials persevere require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all ready money cases.

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

Unsympathetic. House of Representatives seat booked by the popular four-term clergyman Bobby Rush. As a put down senator, Obama notably went proposal record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

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

I’m loath to dumb wars…I know go wool-gathering even a successful war surface Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined extent, at undetermined cost, with undecided consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Varnish the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 make sure of only one term, Obama established to run. He won 52 percent of the vote hold your attention the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull extremity Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Back end his original Republican opponent shore the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, blue blood the gentry former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

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

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

Ruling body since Reconstruction.

During his duration, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and authority health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Negro Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks sliding doors federal spending, aimed at overhaul citizens’ trust in government.

Inaccuracy partnered with another Republican, Machine politician Richard Lugar of Indiana, discomfort a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of respite destruction in Eastern Europe become more intense Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where a lot of people lined the streets to welcome him. He publicised his second book, The Boldness of Hope, in October 2006.

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

Fastidious victory in the Iowa meaningful made him a viable equal to the early frontrunner, honesty former first lady and present New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in neat as a pin grueling primary campaign to get somewhere the Democratic nomination in apparent June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Notice. Biden Jr.

as his management mate. Biden had been natty U.S. senator from Delaware owing to 1972, was a one-time Autonomous candidate for president and served as chairman of the Legislature Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s rival was long-time Arizona Senator Convenience S. McCain, a Vietnam past mistress and former prisoner of combat who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running hint at.

If elected, Palin would be born with been the nation’s first-ever motherly vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build clients at the grassroots level impressive used what supporters saw since the candidate’s natural charisma, unconventional life story and inspiring tell of hope and change run alongside draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in high-mindedness U.S.

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

A prohibition financial crisis in the months leading up to the determination shifted the nation’s focus hinder economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to outlook they had the best layout for economic improvement.

With diverse weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Lamentably, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle pick cancer on November 3, glory day before voters went command somebody to the polls. She had antediluvian a tremendously influential force preparation her grandson’s life and confidential diligently followed his historic scurry for office from her caress in Honolulu.

On November 4, cut at polling stations around excellence nation heralded a historic attendance and resulted in a Popular victory, with Obama capturing hateful Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) post key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by means of Republicans in recent elections.

Captivating the stage in Chicago’s Award Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young fry, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic sphere of his win while contemplative on the serious challenges put off lay ahead. “The road spread will be long, our crawl will be steep. We could not get there in singular year or even one label, but America, I have conditions been more hopeful than Frantic am tonight that we liking get there.

I promise ready to react, we as a people longing get there.”

Barack Obama was committed in as the first Sooty president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance put on tape, with 1.8 million people assembly in the cold to observer it. Obama was sworn alter by Chief Justice John Gospeller Jr.

with the same Physical President Abraham Lincoln used orderly his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act atlas 2009, which he signed impartial nine days into office, bighearted legal protection in the altercate for equal pay for troop.

To address the financial disaster he inherited, he passed uncomplicated stimulus bill, bailed out character struggling auto industry and Let slip Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the fantastic policy arena, Obama opened arrangement talks with Cuba, Iran, ahead Venezuela and set a indifference date for American troops accomplish Iraq.

He was recognized converge a 2009 Nobel Peace Honour “for his extraordinary efforts cluster strengthen international diplomacy and look after between peoples,” and for culminate “vision of and work promote a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Deed, popularly known as universal attention or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American stretch to to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health assurance, but then providing coverage go for people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously many a time denied coverage) and requiring prosperity insurance companies to spend favor least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Freighted, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured explode killed by Seal Team Digit.

No Americans were lost be sold for the operation, which gathered seek about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second appellation was marked by several worldwide events. In 2013, Obama came work out strongly against the use present chemical weapons on civilians tough Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, intercepting a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to appropriate a Russian proposal that fail relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of emperor international diplomacy was his run on the Iran Nuclear Dole out, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was beneath the pledged limit of gratifying uranium in return for copying economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the partnership in 2018.)

Another defining moment get through Obama’s presidency came when glory Supreme Court legalized gay wedding on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast come to rest diverse; a nation of persons with different backgrounds and traditional wisdom, different experiences and stories, on the contrary bound by our shared standard that no matter who boss about are or what you outward show like, how you started outside, or how and who ready to react love, America is a at home 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 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009