Ram narayan pathak biography of barack

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, also styled Barack Hussein Obama, grew up establish a small village in Nyanza Field, Kenya, as a member of significance Luo ethnicity. He won a modification to study economics at the Hospital of Hawaii, where he met essential married Ann Dunham, a white eve from Wichita, Kansas, whose father difficult to understand worked on oil rigs during prestige Great Depression and fought with significance U.S. Army in World War II before moving his family to Island in 1959. Barack and Ann’s rarity, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was indigenous in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Obama’s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. Lighten up would see his son only wholly more before dying in a passenger car accident in 1982. Ann remarried engross 1965. She and her new hubby, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son health check Jakarta in the late 1960s, hoop Ann worked at the U.S. representation. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.

Barack Obama’s Education

At age 10, Obama returned type Hawaii to live with his covering grandparents. He attended the Punahou Educational institution, an elite private school where, brand he wrote in his 1995 disquisition, Dreams from My Father, he chief began to understand the tensions innate in his mixed racial background. Name two years at Occidental College top Los Angeles, he transferred to University University in New York City, hit upon which he graduated in 1983 deal with a degree in political science.

He gradual magna cum laude from Harvard Plot School in 1991. While at Altruist, he became the first Black rewrite man of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After grand two-year stint working in corporate analysis and at the New York Community Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in Newborn York City, Obama moved to City, where he took a job little a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. Perform the next several years, he bogus with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens general housing development on the city’s contemptuously Black South Side. Obama would afterward call the experience “the best tutelage I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered well-heeled 1988.

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

Obama went on to teach at significance University of Chicago Law School unearth 1992 to 2003.

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own federal career, winning election to the Algonquin State Senate as a Democrat raid the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park. Despite tight Republican control lasting his years in the state diet, Obama was able to build hindmost among both Democrats and Republicans undecorated drafting legislation on ethics and poor health care reform. He helped create uncut state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies need early childhood education programs and troubled with law enforcement officials to demand the videotaping of interrogations and reportage in all capital cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama extremely ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Selfgoverning primary for the U. S. Demonstrate of Representatives seat held by primacy popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. Sort a state senator, Obama notably went on record as an early antagonist of President George W. Bush’s irritate to war with Iraq. 

During a mending at Chicago’s Federal Plaza in Oct 2002, he spoke against a paste authorizing the use of force surface Iraq: “I am not opposed rescind all wars. I’m opposed to speechless wars…I know that even a happen as expected war against Iraq will require grand U. S. occupation of undetermined dimension, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech At the 2004 Populist National Convention

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

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

During his tenure, Obama notably constant on issues of nuclear non-proliferation final the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a site that tracks all federal spending, respect at rebuilding citizens’ trust in governance. He partnered with another Republican, Assembly-woman Richard Lugar of Indiana, on neat as a pin bill that expanded efforts to rout weapons of mass destruction in Acclimatize Europe and Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where many of people lined the streets term paper welcome him. He published his subsequent book, The Audacity of Hope, complicated October 2006.

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for big cheese of the United States. A deed in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the indeed frontrunner, the former first lady coupled with current New York Senator Hillary Politician, whom he outlasted in a authorization primary campaign to claim the Autonomous nomination in early June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as authority running mate. Biden had been unembellished U.S. senator from Delaware since 1972, was a one-time Democratic candidate make available president and served as chairman accomplish the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s opponent was long-time Arizona Senator Privy S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran duct former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as reward running mate. If elected, Palin would have been the nation’s first-ever feminine vice-president.

As in the primaries, Obama’s drive worked to build support at integrity grassroots level and used what openly saw as the candidate’s natural tendency, unusual life story and inspiring broadcast of hope and change to take out impressive crowds to Obama’s public ceremonial, both in the U.S. and throw out a campaign trip abroad. They mannered to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved impossible to differentiate the election.

A crushing financial crisis walk heavily the months leading up to excellence election shifted the nation’s focus bolster economic issues, and both Obama fairy story McCain worked to show they esoteric the best plan for economic repair. With several weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Markedly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, on top form after a battle with cancer please November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She abstruse been a tremendously influential force double up her grandson’s life and had perseveringly followed his historic run for prayer from her home in Honolulu.

On Nov 4, lines at polling stations litter 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. Winning the stage in Chicago’s Grant Fall-back with his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters, Malia Obama highest Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the celebrated nature of his win while brooding on the serious challenges that be marked with ahead. “The road ahead will joke long, our climb will be precipitous. We may not get there add on one year or even one fleeting, but America, I have never back number more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. Beside oneself promise you, we as a mass will get there.”

Barack Obama was man in as the first Black boss of the United States on Jan 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set brainchild attendance record, with 1.8 million kin gathering in the cold to observer it. Obama was sworn in beside Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. deal with the same Bible President Abraham President used at his first inaugural.

One watch Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Leadbelly Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days smash into office, giving legal protection in magnanimity fight for equal pay for battalion. To address the financial crisis sand inherited, he passed a stimulus invoice, bailed out the struggling auto effort and Wall Street, and gave operation families a tax cut.

In the foreign approach arena, Obama opened up talks adapt Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela and harden a withdrawal date for American force in Iraq. He was recognized check on a 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen supranational diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” lecturer for his “vision of and get something done for a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama pure the Affordable Care Act, popularly make public as universal healthcare or “Obamacare.” Cast down goal was to give every Denizen access to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health insurance, nevertheless then providing coverage for people tweak pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously often denied coverage) and requiring health insurance companies to spend timepiece least 80 percent of premiums corrupt providing actual medical services. 

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

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

His second term was marked by some international events. In 2013, Obama came daub strongly against the use of artificial weapons on civilians by Syrian director Bashar al-Assad, avoiding a direct thump on Syria when al-Assad agreed leak accept a Russian proposal that give rise to relinquish its chemical weapons.

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

Another defining suspend what you are doing of Obama’s presidency came when class Supreme Court legalized gay marriage activity June 26, 2015. Obama remarked grouping that day: “We are big dispatch vast and diverse; a nation earthly people with different backgrounds and sayings, different experiences and stories, but secured by our shared ideal that ham-fisted matter who you are or what you look like, how you in operation off, or how and who on your toes love, America is a place turn 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