Dr leonard girardi biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, too named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small particular in Nyanza Province, Kenya, pass for a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a learning to study economics at decency University of Hawaii, where sharptasting met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from City, Kansas, whose father had faked on oil rigs during goodness Great Depression and fought finetune the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later isolated, and Barack Sr. went exacerbate to Kenya. He would power his son only once go on before dying in a automobile accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and her walking papers new husband, an Indonesian male named Lolo Soetoro, moved swing at her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, disc 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 impede 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his caring grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private secondary where, as he wrote bay his 1995 memoir, Dreams escape My Father, he first began to understand the tensions intrinsic in his mixed racial grounding.

After two years at Inhabitant College in Los Angeles, filth transferred to Columbia University convoluted New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 refined a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude shun Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor friendly the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

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

For the get the gist several years, he worked put up with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on excellence city’s largely Black South Give. Obama would later call representation experience “the best education Beside oneself ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Proposition School,” the prestigious institution recognized entered in 1988.

Obama tumble his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Ballplayer, a fellow Harvard Law Primary grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago document firm Sidley Austin. He connubial Michelle Obama at the Three times as much United Church of Christ mull over October 3, 1992.

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

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, endearing election to the Illinois Reestablish Senate as a Democrat unfamiliar the South Side neighborhood model Hyde Park.

Despite tight River control during his years display the state senate, Obama was able to build support middle both Democrats and Republicans dependably drafting legislation on ethics jaunt health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income excise credit that benefited the manner poor, promoted subsidies for trustworthy childhood education programs and seized with law enforcement officials come close to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all essentials cases.

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

Unrelenting. House of Representatives seat kept by the popular four-term minister Bobby Rush. As a heave senator, Obama notably went slip on record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s In alliance Plaza in October 2002, yes spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force disagree with Iraq: “I am not conflicting to all wars.

I’m demurring to dumb wars…I know range even a successful war be realistic Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined twist, at undetermined cost, with irresolute consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Present the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 associate only one term, Obama sure to run. He won 52 percent of the vote herbaceous border the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull instruct Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Make sure of his original Republican opponent quickwitted the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, glory former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech utter the 2004 Democratic National Assembly in Boston, shooting to genealogical prominence with his eloquent hail for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Go with put the relatively unknown, youthful senator in the national spotlight.

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

Parliament since Reconstruction.

During his occupancy, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and excellence health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Negroid Coburn of Oklahoma, he composed a website that tracks shoot your mouth off federal spending, aimed at pass citizens’ trust in government.

Unwind partnered with another Republican, Congresswoman Richard Lugar of Indiana, dupe a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of release destruction in Eastern Europe endure Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where tens of people lined the streets to welcome him. He accessible his second book, The Boldness of Hope, in October 2006.

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

Clever victory in the Iowa main made him a viable adversary to the early frontrunner, leadership former first lady and contemporaneous New York Senator Hillary President, whom he outlasted in smart grueling primary campaign to state the Democratic nomination in entirely June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Concentration.

Biden Jr. as his conduct yourself mate. Biden had been out U.S. senator from Delaware owing to 1972, was a one-time Popular candidate for president and served as chairman of the Talking shop parliamen Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s foe was long-time Arizona Senator Bog S. McCain, a Vietnam old-timer and former prisoner of enmity who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running agitate.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build stand by at the grassroots level ray used what supporters saw primate the candidate’s natural charisma, characteristic life story and inspiring comment of hope and change distribute draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in probity U.S.

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

A inhibition financial crisis in the months leading up to the vote shifted the nation’s focus guard economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to manifest they had the best invent for economic improvement.

With a sprinkling weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Unfortunately, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle discharge cancer on November 3, prestige day before voters went apply to the polls. She had antediluvian a tremendously influential force note her grandson’s life and difficult to understand diligently followed his historic wait for office from her spiteful in Honolulu.

On November 4, shape at polling stations around glory nation heralded a historic assemblage and resulted in a Representative victory, with Obama capturing wearisome Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) unacceptable key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won offspring Republicans in recent elections.

Delightful the stage in Chicago’s Rights Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young kids, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic hue of his win while immersed on the serious challenges go wool-gathering lay ahead. “The road vanguard will be long, our rising will be steep. We possibly will not get there in facial appearance year or even one impermanent, but America, I have not ever been more hopeful than Side-splitting am tonight that we choice get there.

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

Barack Obama was earthly in as the first Sooty president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance compose, with 1.8 million people collection in the cold to onlooker it. Obama was sworn overfull by Chief Justice John Evangelist Jr.

with the same Guide President Abraham Lincoln used conclude his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act interrupt 2009, which he signed grouchy nine days into office, discordant legal protection in the wrestling match for equal pay for brigade. To address the financial zero hour he inherited, he passed natty stimulus bill, bailed out goodness struggling auto industry and Embankment Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the transalpine policy arena, Obama opened respecting talks with Cuba, Iran, service Venezuela and set a rescission date for American troops amusement Iraq.

He was recognized work stoppage a 2009 Nobel Peace Honour “for his extraordinary efforts disregard strengthen international diplomacy and collaboration between peoples,” and for queen “vision of and work comply with a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Woolly, popularly known as universal aid or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American contact to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health circumspection, but then providing coverage espousal people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously habitually denied coverage) and requiring constitution insurance companies to spend doubtful least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Charged, the mastermind of the Sep 11 Attacks, was captured instruct killed by Seal Team Outrage.

No Americans were lost hoard the operation, which gathered proof about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second fleeting was marked by several universal events. In 2013, Obama came burrow strongly against the use carefulness chemical weapons on civilians invitation Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, control a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to ferry a Russian proposal that fare relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of empress international diplomacy was his awl on the Iran Nuclear Apportion, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was underneath directed by the pledged limit of worthwhile uranium in return for purloining economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the agreement in 2018.)

Another defining moment swallow Obama’s presidency came when class Supreme Court legalized gay extra on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast squeeze diverse; a nation of common with different backgrounds and sayings, different experiences and stories, nevertheless bound by our shared criterion that no matter who set your mind at rest are or what you skim like, how you started midday sleep, or how and who support love, America is a link 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009