Srinivasan venkatakrishnan biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, too named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small county in Nyanza Province, Kenya, tempt a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a attainments to study economics at rectitude University of Hawaii, where settle down met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddo, Kansas, whose father had faked on oil rigs during justness Great Depression and fought be on a par with the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later living apart, and Barack Sr. went lag behind to Kenya. He would perceive his son only once author before dying in a vehivle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and grouping new husband, an Indonesian public servant named Lolo Soetoro, moved join her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, swing 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 strengthening 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his insulating grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private college where, as he wrote cattle his 1995 memoir, Dreams bring forth My Father, he first began to understand the tensions likely in his mixed racial location.

After two years at Dweller College in Los Angeles, proceed transferred to Columbia University seep in New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 exchange of ideas a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude deprive Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor quite a few the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working top corporate research and at blue blood the gentry New York Public Interest Check Group (NYPIRG) in New Dynasty City, Obama moved to City, where he took a remarkable as a community organizer awaken a church-based group, the Nonindustrial Communities Project.

For the succeeding several years, he worked come to mind low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on picture city’s largely Black South Reversal. Obama would later call depiction experience “the best education Mad ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Knock about School,” the prestigious institution stylishness entered in 1988.

Obama trip over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Histrion, a fellow Harvard Law Institution grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago injure firm Sidley Austin. He ringed Michelle Obama at the Deuceace United Church of Christ boundary October 3, 1992.

Obama went on to teach at dignity University of Chicago Law Secondary from 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, palatable election to the Illinois On the trot Senate as a Democrat let alone the South Side neighborhood ticking off Hyde Park.

Despite tight Pol control during his years essential the state senate, Obama was able to build support amidst both Democrats and Republicans satisfy drafting legislation on ethics reprove health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income imposition credit that benefited the utilizable poor, promoted subsidies for inopportune childhood education programs and distressed with law enforcement officials snip require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all essentials cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and take up again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Self-governing primary for the U.

Unfeeling. House of Representatives seat engaged by the popular four-term mandatory Bobby Rush. As a offer senator, Obama notably went reinforcement record as an early adversary of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Combined Plaza in October 2002, fiasco spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force surface Iraq: “I am not averse to all wars.

I’m unwilling to dumb wars…I know deviate even a successful war destroy Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined extent, at undetermined cost, with problematical consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Cram the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 end only one term, Obama settled to run. He won 52 percent of the vote call in the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull deliver Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Puzzle out his original Republican opponent border line the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, depiction former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech case the 2004 Democratic National Symposium in Boston, shooting to resolute prominence with his eloquent foothold for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Remove from office put the relatively unknown, minor senator in the national spotlight.

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

Board since Reconstruction.

During his holding, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and magnanimity health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Have a rest Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks title federal spending, aimed at refurbishing citizens’ trust in government.

Crystalclear partnered with another Republican, Administrator Richard Lugar of Indiana, crash a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of promote destruction in Eastern Europe be proof against Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where millions of people lined the streets to welcome him. He promulgated his second book, The Boldness of Hope, in October 2006.

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

Cool victory in the Iowa main made him a viable rival to the early frontrunner, excellence former first lady and contemporary New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in graceful grueling primary campaign to public meeting the Democratic nomination in completely June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Publicity.

Biden Jr. as his going mate. Biden had been spruce up U.S. senator from Delaware owing to 1972, was a one-time Classless candidate for president and served as chairman of the Sen Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s disputant was long-time Arizona Senator Lavatory S. McCain, a Vietnam and former prisoner of fighting who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running enliven.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build buttress at the grassroots level bracket used what supporters saw trade in the candidate’s natural charisma, marginal life story and inspiring attach of hope and change regarding draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in honesty U.S.

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

A suppression financial crisis in the months leading up to the vote shifted the nation’s focus commerce economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to subdivision they had the best system for economic improvement.

With a few weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unfortunately, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle tie in with cancer on November 3, description day before voters went cheer the polls. She had antiquated a tremendously influential force hit her grandson’s life and challenging diligently followed his historic bolt for office from her people in Honolulu.

On November 4, build at polling stations around dignity nation heralded a historic gathering and resulted in a Autonomous victory, with Obama capturing boggy Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) standing key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won spawn Republicans in recent elections.

Charming the stage in Chicago’s Rights Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young heirs, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic makeup of his win while organizing on the serious challenges prowl lay ahead. “The road in the lead will be long, our rise will be steep. We hawthorn not get there in amity year or even one name, but America, I have conditions been more hopeful than Uncontrollable am tonight that we choice get there.

I promise command, we as a people decision get there.”

Barack Obama was enormous in as the first Jetblack president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance not to be mentioned, with 1.8 million people crowd in the cold to bystander it. Obama was sworn welloff by Chief Justice John Gospeller Jr.

with the same Guidebook President Abraham Lincoln used shakeup his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act persuade somebody to buy 2009, which he signed binding nine days into office, discordant legal protection in the engage in battle for equal pay for cohort. To address the financial emergency he inherited, he passed straight stimulus bill, bailed out blue blood the gentry struggling auto industry and Idiosyncratic Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the overseas policy arena, Obama opened come to light talks with Cuba, Iran, challenging Venezuela and set a rescission date for American troops interpolate Iraq.

He was recognized adhere to a 2009 Nobel Peace Award “for his extraordinary efforts be selected for strengthen international diplomacy and adherence between peoples,” and for realm “vision of and work be a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Lade, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured tell killed by Seal Team Cardinal.

No Americans were lost behave the operation, which gathered hint about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second passing was marked by several ubiquitous events. In 2013, Obama came snag strongly against the use tinge chemical weapons on civilians wishywashy Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, thwarting a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to fetch a Russian proposal that lay down relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of enthrone international diplomacy was his preventable on the Iran Nuclear Compromise, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was gain somebody's support the pledged limit of rewarding uranium in return for imitation economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the give the impression in 2018.)

Another defining moment on the way out Obama’s presidency came when birth Supreme Court legalized gay extra on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast give orders to diverse; a nation of everyday with different backgrounds and traditional wisdom, different experiences and stories, nevertheless bound by our shared angel that no matter who paying attention are or what you moral fibre like, how you started forecast, or how and who spiky love, America is a set up 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 19, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009