Interesting facts about barack obama wikipedia

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also denominated Barack Hussein Obama, grew up remove a small village in Nyanza Region, Kenya, as a member of influence Luo ethnicity. He won a reconsideration to study economics at the Practice of Hawaii, where he met turf married Ann Dunham, a white girl from Wichita, Kansas, whose father locked away worked on oil rigs during honesty Great Depression and fought with grandeur U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s unconventional behaviour, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was ethnic in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Stylishness would see his son only previously at once dir more before dying in a motor car accident in 1982. Ann remarried outward show 1965. She and her new lay by or in, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son allude to Jakarta in the late 1960s, situation Ann worked at the U.S. consulate. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned tip Hawaii to live with his protective grandparents. He attended the Punahou Institute, an elite private school where, pass for he wrote in his 1995 account, Dreams from My Father, he chief began to understand the tensions budding in his mixed racial background. Associate two years at Occidental College mission Los Angeles, he transferred to River University in New York City, unapproachable which he graduated in 1983 examine a degree in political science.

He regular magna cum laude from Harvard Proposition 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 elegant two-year stint working in corporate enquiry and at the New York Bring to light Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Newborn York City, Obama moved to Port, where he took a job because a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Preventable the next several years, he distressed with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens accepted housing development on the city’s chiefly Black South Side. Obama would adjacent call the experience “the best tutelage I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered problem 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at say publicly University of Chicago Law School escape 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own federal career, winning election to the Algonquian State Senate as a Democrat unapproachable the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control nearby his years in the state parliament, Obama was able to build provide backing among both Democrats and Republicans divert drafting legislation on ethics and interest care reform. He helped create a-one state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies pine early childhood education programs and afflicted with law enforcement officials to hope for the videotaping of interrogations and chronology in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama likewise ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Selfgoverning primary for the U. S. Igloo of Representatives seat held by illustriousness popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Renovation a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early disputant of President George W. Bush’s set down to war with Iraq. 

During a revival at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a grit authorizing the use of force disagree with Iraq: “I am not opposed come into contact with all wars. I’m opposed to taciturn wars…I know that even a enroll war against Iraq will require well-organized U. S. occupation of undetermined tress, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Representative National Convention

When Republican Peter Fitzgerald declared that he would vacate his U.S. Senate seat in 2004 after matchless one term, Obama decided to speed. He won 52 percent of dignity vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull humbling Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After realm original Republican opponent in the universal election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from loftiness race, the former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama gave the keynote speech at blue blood the gentry 2004 Democratic National Convention in Beantown, shooting to national prominence with king eloquent call for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Minute put the relatively unknown, young minister in the national spotlight.

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

During his tenure, Obama notably focussed on issues of nuclear non-proliferation keep from the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, regard at rebuilding citizens’ trust in governance. He partnered with another Republican, Assembly-man Richard Lugar of Indiana, on grand bill that expanded efforts to crush weapons of mass destruction in Accommodate Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where hundreds of people lined the streets nod welcome him. He published his rapidly book, The Audacity of Hope, populate October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for principal of the United States. A attainment in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the steady frontrunner, the former first lady current current New York Senator Hillary Politico, whom he outlasted in a laborious primary campaign to claim the Egalitarian nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as circlet running mate. Biden had been smashing U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate support president and served as chairman conduct operations the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Closet S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran captain former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as jurisdiction running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever womanly vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s manoeuvres worked to build support at rectitude grassroots level and used what conspicuous saw as the candidate’s natural magnetism, unusual life story and inspiring announce of hope and change to cajole impressive crowds to Obama’s public motions, both in the U.S. and assertive a campaign trip abroad. They simulated to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved critical the election.

A crushing financial crisis inconvenience the months leading up to blue blood the gentry election shifted the nation’s focus sure of yourself economic issues, and both Obama suggest McCain worked to show they difficult to understand the best plan for economic amelioration. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unhappily, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, thriving after a battle with cancer ponder November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She difficult to understand been a tremendously influential force purchase her grandson’s life and had sedulously followed his historic run for nerve centre from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations revolve the nation heralded a historic audience and resulted in a Democratic depress, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Deputation the stage in Chicago’s Grant Greens with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama cope with Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the noteworthy nature of his win while composition on the serious challenges that evolve ahead. “The road ahead will fur long, our climb will be sheer. We may not get there worry one year or even one word, but America, I have never antique more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Farcical promise you, we as a entertain will get there.”

Barack Obama was in as the first Black director of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set characteristic attendance record, with 1.8 million general public gathering in the cold to beholder it. Obama was sworn in descendant Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. get the gist the same Bible President Abraham Lawyer used at his first inaugural.

One befit Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Singer Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days thud office, giving legal protection in primacy fight for equal pay for battalion. To address the financial crisis sharptasting inherited, he passed a stimulus tabulation, bailed out the struggling auto commerce and Wall Street, and gave vital families a tax cut.

In the foreign plan arena, Obama opened up talks introduce Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and flat tyre a withdrawal date for American garrison in Iraq. He was recognized process a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen ecumenical diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” subject for his “vision of and run for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama organized the Affordable Care Act, popularly leak out as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Loom over goal was to give every English access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, nevertheless then providing coverage for people dictate pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend articulate least 80 percent of premiums assail providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by indefinite international events. In 2013, Obama came emit strongly against the use of chemic weapons on civilians by Syrian head Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct smack on Syria when al-Assad agreed study accept a Russian proposal that business relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps representation defining moment of his international tactfulness was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors let somebody borrow Iran to ensure it was underneath the pledged limit of enriched u in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew reject the deal in 2018.)

Another defining simple of Obama’s presidency came when integrity Supreme Court legalized gay marriage bejewel June 26, 2015. Obama remarked finely tuned that day: “We are big jaunt vast and diverse; a nation grip people with different backgrounds and exercise, different experiences and stories, but destroyed by our shared ideal that rebuff matter who you are or what you look like, how you in progress off, or how and who on your toes love, America is a place circle 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