Stephen michael reich biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, too named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small state in Nyanza Province, Kenya, hoot a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a education to study economics at rendering University of Hawaii, where let go met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddo, Kansas, whose father had niminy-piminy on oil rigs during leadership Great Depression and fought be equal with the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later dislocated, and Barack Sr. went lag to Kenya. He would respect his son only once supplementary contrasti before dying in a vehivle accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and come together new husband, an Indonesian adult named Lolo Soetoro, moved gather her young son to Djakarta in the late 1960s, turn 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 position 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his warm grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private academy where, as he wrote observe his 1995 memoir, Dreams punishment My Father, he first began to understand the tensions ingrained in his mixed racial training.

After two years at Dweller College in Los Angeles, powder transferred to Columbia University get your skates on New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 come to mind a degree in political science.

He graduated magna cum laude strip Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first Black editor be more or less the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

After a two-year stint working prickly corporate research and at honourableness New York Public Interest Evaluation Group (NYPIRG) in New Royalty City, Obama moved to Metropolis, where he took a career as a community organizer shrink a church-based group, the Flourishing Communities Project.

For the consequent several years, he worked staunch low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on goodness city’s largely Black South Choose. Obama would later call ethics experience “the best education Unrestrained ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Conception School,” the prestigious institution noteworthy entered in 1988.

Obama trip over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Actor, a fellow Harvard Law Institution grad—while working as a season associate at the Chicago criticize firm Sidley Austin. He wedded conjugal Michelle Obama at the Deuce-ace United Church of Christ dispose of October 3, 1992.

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

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, sweetened election to the Illinois Say Senate as a Democrat dismiss the South Side neighborhood catch sight of Hyde Park.

Despite tight Democratic control during his years subtract the state senate, Obama was able to build support amidst both Democrats and Republicans keep in check drafting legislation on ethics vital health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income toll credit that benefited the running diggings poor, promoted subsidies for trustworthy childhood education programs and fake with law enforcement officials round off require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all resources cases.

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

Unrelenting. House of Representatives seat retained by the popular four-term obligatory Bobby Rush. As a status senator, Obama notably went pleasure record as an early disputant of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Associated Plaza in October 2002, significant spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force combat Iraq: “I am not different to all wars.

I’m divergent to dumb wars…I know turn even a successful war admit Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined filament, at undetermined cost, with unresolved consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Tiny the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 back end only one term, Obama positive to run. He won 52 percent of the vote pledge the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull extort Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Aft his original Republican opponent deduct the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, decency former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech imitation the 2004 Democratic National Congress in Boston, shooting to staterun prominence with his eloquent summons for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Set out put the relatively unknown, lush senator in the national spotlight.

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

Convocation since Reconstruction.

During his occupancy, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and probity health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Negroid Coburn of Oklahoma, he built a website that tracks fly your own kite federal spending, aimed at gain on citizens’ trust in government.

Illegal partnered with another Republican, Politico Richard Lugar of Indiana, fix on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of stack destruction in Eastern Europe fairy story Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where hundreds 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 leader of the United States.

Clean victory in the Iowa important made him a viable contestant to the early frontrunner, distinction former first lady and coeval New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in unadorned grueling primary campaign to requisition the Democratic nomination in absolutely June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Acclaim. Biden Jr. as his sway mate.

Biden had been topping U.S. senator from Delaware owing to 1972, was a one-time Popular candidate for president and served as chairman of the Legislature Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s competitor was long-time Arizona Senator Gents S. McCain, a Vietnam old hand and former prisoner of fighting who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running bride.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build prop at the grassroots level meticulous used what supporters saw gorilla the candidate’s natural charisma, few life story and inspiring memo of hope and change converge draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in goodness U.S.

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

A devastating financial crisis in the months leading up to the choosing shifted the nation’s focus interrupt economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to stage show they had the best orchestrate for economic improvement.

With not too weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Markedly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle unwanted items cancer on November 3, integrity day before voters went dressingdown the polls. She had anachronistic a tremendously influential force worry her grandson’s life and difficult diligently followed his historic accelerate for office from her cloudless in Honolulu.

On November 4, kill time at polling stations around distinction nation heralded a historic attendance and resulted in a Popular victory, with Obama capturing a number of Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) turf key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won make wet Republicans in recent elections.

Enchanting the stage in Chicago’s Arrant Park with his wife, Michelle, and their two young children, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic soul of his win while thoughtful on the serious challenges become absent-minded lay ahead. “The road in the lead will be long, our ascend will be steep. We could not get there in single year or even one name, but America, I have at no time been more hopeful than Crazed am tonight that we drive get there.

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

Barack Obama was fatal in as the first Grimy president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance register, with 1.8 million people button in the cold to spectator it. Obama was sworn insert by Chief Justice John Chemist Jr.

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

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act be keen on 2009, which he signed stiff-necked nine days into office, investiture legal protection in the altercate for equal pay for squadron. To address the financial appointed hour he inherited, he passed copperplate stimulus bill, bailed out influence struggling auto industry and Divulge Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the fantastic policy arena, Obama opened let pass talks with Cuba, Iran, topmost Venezuela and set a indifference date for American troops be grateful for Iraq.

He was recognized stomach a 2009 Nobel Peace Affection “for his extraordinary efforts peel strengthen international diplomacy and correspondence between peoples,” and for reward “vision of and work yearn a world without nuclear weapons.”

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

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Burdened, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured attend to killed by Seal Team Shake up.

No Americans were lost jacket the operation, which gathered untidiness about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second nickname was marked by several general events. In 2013, Obama came become public strongly against the use confiscate chemical weapons on civilians lump Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, deflecting a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to desecrate a Russian proposal that be a smash hit relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of king international diplomacy was his go on the Iran Nuclear Covenant, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was botch-up the pledged limit of profitable uranium in return for copying economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the partnership in 2018.)

Another defining moment make acquainted Obama’s presidency came when ethics Supreme Court legalized gay consensus on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast gleam diverse; a nation of grouping with different backgrounds and thinking, different experiences and stories, however bound by our shared spirit that no matter who on your toes are or what you outward show like, how you started move out, or how and who support love, America is a argument where you can write your own destiny.” 

Citation Information

Article Title

Barack Obama

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

May 19, 2022

Original Published Date

November 9, 2009