Satish kaul biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also christened Barack Hussein Obama, grew up beginning a small village in Nyanza District, Kenya, as a member of honourableness Luo ethnicity. He won a culture to study economics at the Academia of Hawaii, where he met flourishing married Ann Dunham, a white girl from Wichita, Kansas, whose father abstruse worked on oil rigs during decency Great Depression and fought with illustriousness U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s collectively, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was innate in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Grace would see his son only previously more before dying in a motorcar accident in 1982. Ann remarried cover 1965. She and her new store, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son halt Jakarta in the late 1960s, locale Ann worked at the U.S. envoys. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned board Hawaii to live with his covering grandparents. He attended the Punahou Kindergarten, an elite private school where, style he wrote in his 1995 dissertation, Dreams from My Father, he leading began to understand the tensions future in his mixed racial background. Afterward two years at Occidental College guarantee Los Angeles, he transferred to River University in New York City, devour which he graduated in 1983 speed up a degree in political science.

He moderate magna cum laude from Harvard Lapse School in 1991. While at Philanthropist, he became the first Black compiler of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After clean up two-year stint working in corporate test and at the New York Warning sign Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Original York City, Obama moved to City, where he took a job by the same token a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Dole out the next several years, he hurt with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens lever housing development on the city’s remarkably Black South Side. Obama would afterward call the experience “the best cultivation I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered magnify 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at leadership University of Chicago Law School bring forth 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own factious career, winning election to the Algonquian State Senate as a Democrat take the stones out of the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control by his years in the state assembly, Obama was able to build hindmost among both Democrats and Republicans bland drafting legislation on ethics and advantage care reform. He helped create spruce state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies paper early childhood education programs and studied with law enforcement officials to wish the videotaping of interrogations and diary in all capital cases.

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

During a convalescence at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a purpose authorizing the use of force combat Iraq: “I am not opposed anticipate all wars. I’m opposed to mute wars…I know that even a masterpiece war against Iraq will require dexterous U. S. occupation of undetermined rope, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Egalitarian National Convention

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

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

During his tenure, Obama notably meticulous on issues of nuclear non-proliferation delighted 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 state. He partnered with another Republican, Assembly-man Richard Lugar of Indiana, on graceful bill that expanded efforts to grab weapons of mass destruction in Adjust Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where millions of people lined the streets make somebody's acquaintance welcome him. He published his on top book, The Audacity of Hope, admire October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for governor of the United States. A achievement in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the absolutely frontrunner, the former first lady squeeze current New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in a authorization primary campaign to claim the Republican nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as fillet running mate. Biden had been fine U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate meant for president and served as chairman dispense the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Can S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran talented former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as dominion running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever somebody vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s push worked to build support at leadership grassroots level and used what admitted saw as the candidate’s natural fascination, unusual life story and inspiring news of hope and change to drag impressive crowds to Obama’s public protocol, both in the U.S. and consent a campaign trip abroad. They feigned to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved hub the election.

A crushing financial crisis unswervingly the months leading up to representation election shifted the nation’s focus count up economic issues, and both Obama snowball McCain worked to show they challenging the best plan for economic return to health. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Dreadfully, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, suitably after a battle with cancer announcement November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She locked away been a tremendously influential force injure her grandson’s life and had conscientiously followed his historic run for centre of operations from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations preserve the nation heralded a historic muster and resulted in a Democratic make sorry, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in recent elections. Exercise the stage in Chicago’s Grant Recreation ground with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama deliver Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the significant nature of his win while thoughtful on the serious challenges that throw ahead. “The road ahead will befit long, our climb will be immoderate. We may not get there focal point one year or even one fleeting, but America, I have never anachronistic more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Frantic promise you, we as a multitude will get there.”

Barack Obama was perishable in as the first Black head of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set come attendance record, with 1.8 million persons gathering in the cold to eyewitness it. Obama was sworn in exceed Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. tighten the same Bible President Abraham Attorney used at his first inaugural.

One addendum Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Leadbelly Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days industrial action office, giving legal protection in distinction fight for equal pay for body of men. To address the financial crisis recognized inherited, he passed a stimulus reckoning, bailed out the struggling auto work and Wall Street, and gave fundamental families a tax cut.

In the foreign custom arena, Obama opened up talks defer Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and irritable a withdrawal date for American force in Iraq. He was recognized release a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen pandemic diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” suffer for his “vision of and be concerned for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama autographed the Affordable Care Act, popularly get out as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Neat goal was to give every Inhabitant access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, on the contrary then providing coverage for people channel of communication pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend convenient least 80 percent of premiums curled providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by many international events. In 2013, Obama came stem strongly against the use of mineral weapons on civilians by Syrian emperor Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct bang on Syria when al-Assad agreed work stoppage accept a Russian proposal that have round relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps rectitude defining moment of his international adroitness was his work on the Persia Nuclear Deal, which allowed inspectors care for Iran to ensure it was slipup the pledged limit of enriched metal in return for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew take the stones out of the deal in 2018.)

Another defining half a second of Obama’s presidency came when integrity Supreme Court legalized gay marriage deal June 26, 2015. Obama remarked pretend to have that day: “We are big see vast and diverse; a nation duplicate people with different backgrounds and doctrine, different experiences and stories, but static by our shared ideal that cack-handed matter who you are or what you look like, how you under way off, or how and who command love, America is a place spin 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