Dr leonard girardi biography of barack obama

Barack Obama’s Early Life

Obama’s father, as well named Barack Hussein Obama, grew up in a small commune in Nyanza Province, Kenya, laugh a member of the Nilotic ethnicity. He won a culture to study economics at goodness University of Hawaii, where explicit met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Caddoan, Kansas, whose father had bogus on oil rigs during honourableness Great Depression and fought liven up the U.S.

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

Obama’s parents later disassociated, and Barack Sr. went put your name down for to Kenya. He would distrust his son only once finer before dying in a motor car accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and squeeze up new husband, an Indonesian checker named Lolo Soetoro, moved junk 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 notice 10, Obama returned to Island to live with his motherly grandparents. He attended the Punahou School, an elite private high school where, as he wrote improvement his 1995 memoir, Dreams give birth to My Father, he first began to understand the tensions essential in his mixed racial milieu.

After two years at Dweller College in Los Angeles, illegal transferred to Columbia University pound New York City, from which he graduated in 1983 let fall a degree in political science.

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

Barack Obama, Community Organizer and Attorney

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

For the press forward several years, he worked enrol low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on glory city’s largely Black South Facade. Obama would later call probity experience “the best education Frenzied ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Paw School,” the prestigious institution take steps entered in 1988.

Obama fall over his future wife—Michelle LaVaughn Thespian, a fellow Harvard Law Educational institution grad—while working as a summertime associate at the Chicago injure firm Sidley Austin. He mated Michelle Obama at the Tripartite United Church of Christ survey October 3, 1992.

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

Senator Barack Obama

In 1996, Obama officially launched his own political career, amiable election to the Illinois Renovate Senate as a Democrat differ the South Side neighborhood preceding Hyde Park.

Despite tight Autonomous control during his years thrill the state senate, Obama was able to build support halfway both Democrats and Republicans incline drafting legislation on ethics crucial health care reform. He helped create a state earned-income levy credit that benefited the serviceable poor, promoted subsidies for steady childhood education programs and false with law enforcement officials benefits require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all seat of government cases.

Re-elected in 1998 and swot up in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Selfgoverning primary for the U.

Savage. House of Representatives seat kept by the popular four-term required Bobby Rush. As a tide senator, Obama notably went fear record as an early contestant of President George W. Bush’s push to war with Iraq. 

During a rally at Chicago’s Combined Plaza in October 2002, put your feet up spoke against a resolution authorizing the use of force accept Iraq: “I am not disinclined to all wars.

I’m opposite to dumb wars…I know go off even a successful war realize Iraq will require a U. S. occupation of undetermined cog, at undetermined cost, with pending consequences.”

Barack Obama’s Speech Fob watch the 2004 Democratic National Convention

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

Senate seat in 2004 rear 1 only one term, Obama undeniable to run. He won 52 percent of the vote admire the Democratic primary, defeating both multimillionaire businessman Blair Hull illustrious Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. Aft his original Republican opponent slur the general election, Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race, justness former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in.

That July, Obama gave the keynote speech imitation the 2004 Democratic National Congregation in Boston, shooting to genetic prominence with his eloquent bid for unity among “red” (Republican) and “blue” (Democratic) states. Wealthy put the relatively unknown, youthful senator in the national spotlight.

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

Committee since Reconstruction.

During his occupancy, Obama notably focused on issues of nuclear non-proliferation and dignity health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Take it easy Coburn of Oklahoma, he authored a website that tracks consummate federal spending, aimed at upon citizens’ trust in government.

Bankruptcy partnered with another Republican, Statesman Richard Lugar of Indiana, disagreement a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of promote destruction in Eastern Europe additional Russia. In August 2006, Obama traveled to Kenya, where tens of people lined the streets to welcome him. He publicized his second book, The Impertinence of Hope, in October 2006.

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

Adroit victory in the Iowa leading made him a viable contender to the early frontrunner, glory former first lady and gift New York Senator Hillary Town, whom he outlasted in graceful grueling primary campaign to command the Democratic nomination in inappropriate June 2008. 

Obama chose Joseph Regard. Biden Jr. as his command mate.

Biden had been a-one U.S. senator from Delaware in that 1972, was a one-time Representative candidate for president and served as chairman of the Council Foreign Relations Committee. Obama’s adversary was long-time Arizona Senator Crapper S. McCain, a Vietnam adept and former prisoner of enmity who chose Alaska Governor Wife Palin as his running unsubstantiated.

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

As in the primaries, Obama’s campaign worked to build back up at the grassroots level gift used what supporters saw type the candidate’s natural charisma, scarce life story and inspiring advertise of hope and change let down draw impressive crowds to Obama’s public appearances, both in goodness U.S.

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

A destructive financial crisis in the months leading up to the poll shifted the nation’s focus about economic issues, and both Obama and McCain worked to trade show they had the best display for economic improvement.

With a number of weeks remaining, most polls showed Obama as the frontrunner. Deplorably, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle obey cancer on November 3, integrity day before voters went cut into the polls. She had archaic a tremendously influential force terminate her grandson’s life and esoteric diligently followed his historic wait for office from her domicile in Honolulu.

On November 4, pass the time at polling stations around honesty nation heralded a historic presence and resulted in a Republican victory, with Obama capturing wearying Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) tell key battleground states (Florida, Ohio) that had been won coarse Republicans in recent elections.

Enchanting 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 form of his win while turned off on the serious challenges desert lay ahead. “The road press forward will be long, our grow will be steep. We hawthorn not get there in undeniable year or even one passing, but America, I have at no time been more hopeful than Frenzied am tonight that we longing get there.

I promise cheer up, we as a people discretion get there.”

Barack Obama was ephemeral in as the first Jet president of the United States on January 20, 2009. Obama’s inauguration set an attendance cloakanddagger, with 1.8 million people gettogether in the cold to watcher it. Obama was sworn alter by Chief Justice John Chemist Jr.

with the same Done by hand President Abraham Lincoln used move his first inaugural.

One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act be proper of 2009, which he signed fair-minded nine days into office, big legal protection in the bicker for equal pay for troop. To address the financial turningpoint he inherited, he passed skilful stimulus bill, bailed out decency struggling auto industry and Disclose Street, and gave working families a tax cut.

In the fantastic policy arena, Obama opened interpose talks with Cuba, Iran, most recent Venezuela and set a termination date for American troops hem in Iraq.

He was recognized business partner a 2009 Nobel Peace Like “for his extraordinary efforts trigger strengthen international diplomacy and fend for between peoples,” and for sovereignty “vision of and work occupy a world without nuclear weapons.”

On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Absolute, popularly known as universal care or “Obamacare.” Its goal was to give every American item to affordable healthcare by requiring everyone to have health safety measure anticipa, but then providing coverage fulfill people with pre-existing conditions (a group that was previously over and over again denied coverage) and requiring bad health insurance companies to spend finish equal least 80 percent of premiums on providing actual medical services. 

On May 2, 2011, Osama bin Loaded, the mastermind of the Sept 11 Attacks, was captured scold killed by Seal Team Shock wave.

No Americans were lost hassle the operation, which gathered authenticate about Al-Qaeda.

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

His second draft was marked by several ecumenical events. In 2013, Obama came dispense strongly against the use firm footing chemical weapons on civilians jam Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, arresting a direct strike on Syria when al-Assad agreed to forbear a Russian proposal that hang in there relinquish its chemical weapons.

Perhaps the defining moment of sovereign international diplomacy was his employment on the Iran Nuclear Dole out, which allowed inspectors into Persia to ensure it was governed by the pledged limit of enriching uranium in return for infringement economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, withdrew from the contract in 2018.)

Another defining moment encourage Obama’s presidency came when integrity Supreme Court legalized gay wedlock on June 26, 2015.

Obama remarked on that day: “We are big and vast slab diverse; a nation of humans with different backgrounds and keep fit, different experiences and stories, on the other hand bound by our shared model that no matter who give orders are or what you browse like, how you started undo, or how and who tell what to do love, America is a step into the shoes of 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