Barack Obama – Age, Education & Mother – HISTORY
contents
- the early life of barack obama
- the education of barack obama
- barack obama, community organizer and lawyer
- senator barack obama
- Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
- 2008 presidential campaign
- barack obama’s first term as president
- second term of barack obama as president
barack obama, the 44th president of the united states and the first african-american president, was elected over senator john mccain of arizona on november 4, 2008. obama, a former senator from illinois whose campaign slogan was “change in The One We Can Believe In” and “Yes We Can,” was later elected to a second term over Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
Winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, Obama’s presidency was marked by the historic passage of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare”; the assassination of osama bin laden by signal team six; the iran nuclear deal and the legalization of gay marriage by the supreme court.
the early life of barack obama
obama’s father, also named barack hussein obama, grew up in a small town in nyanza province, kenya, as a member of the luo ethnic group. He won a scholarship to study economics at the University of Hawaii, where he met and married Ann Dunham, a white woman from Wichita, Kansas, whose father had worked on oil rigs during the Great Depression and fought with the United States. He served in World War II before moving his family to Hawaii in 1959. Barack and Ann’s son, Barack Hussein Obama Jr., was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.
did you know? Obama was not only the first African-American president, he was also the first to be born outside of the continental United States. Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.
Obama’s parents later separated and Barack Sr. returned to kenya She would see her son only one more time before she was killed in a car accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and her new husband, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with their young son to Jakarta late in the 1960s where ann worked in the usa embassy. Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.
barack obama’s education
at age 10, obama returned to hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. He attended Punahou School, an elite private school where, as he wrote in his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, he began to understand the tensions inherent in his mixed-racial background. After two years at Western University in Los Angeles, she transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where she graduated in 1983 with a bachelor’s degree in political science.
He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991. While at Harvard, he became the first black editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.
barack obama, community organizer and lawyer
After a two-year stint working in corporate research and the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he took a job as a community organizer with a church-based group, the developing communities project. Over the next several years, he worked with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s largely black South Side. Obama would later call the experience “the best education I’ve ever received, better than anything I’ve received at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered in 1988.
Obama met his future wife, Michelle Lavaughn Robinson, a fellow Harvard Law School graduate, while working as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin. He married Michelle Obama at Trinity United Church of Christ on October 3, 1992.
Obama went on to teach at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2003.
senator barack obama
in 1996, obama officially launched his own political career, winning election to the illinois state senate as a democrat from the south side hyde park neighborhood. Despite tight Republican control during his years in the state senate, obama was able to build support among democrats and republicans to write legislation on ethics and health care reform. helped create a state earned income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies for early childhood education programs, and worked with law enforcement officials to require videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases
Reelected in 1998 and again in 2002, Obama also ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Democratic primary for the U. s. House seat held by popular four-term incumbent Bobby Rush. As a state senator, Obama notably recorded himself as an early opponent of President George W. bush’s push for war with iraq.
During a rally in Chicago’s Federal Plaza in October 2002, he spoke out against a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq: “I’m not opposed to all wars. i am opposed to foolish wars… i know even a successful war against iraq will require a u. s. occupation of indeterminate duration, at indeterminate cost, with indeterminate consequences.”
Barack Obama’s speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention
when republican peter fitzgerald announced he was vacating his usa. senate seat in 2004 after only one term, obama decided to run. He polled 52 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, defeating both billionaire businessman Blair Hull and Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes. After his original Republican opponent in the general election, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race, former presidential candidate Alan Keyes stepped in. That July, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, rocketing to national prominence with his eloquent call for unity between the “Red” (Republican) and “Blue” (Democratic) states. he put the relatively unknown young senator in the national spotlight.
in november 2004, illinois cast 70 percent of its votes for obama (versus 27 percent for keyes), sending him to washington as the third african american elected to the united states. senate since reconstruction.
During his tenure, Obama focused heavily on issues of nuclear nonproliferation and the health threat posed by avian flu. With Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, he created a website that tracks all federal spending, with the goal of rebuilding citizen trust in government. he teamed up with another republican, senator richard lugar of indiana, on a bill that expanded efforts to destroy weapons of mass destruction in eastern europe and russia. in august 2006, obama traveled to kenya, where thousands of people poured into the streets to welcome him. He published his second book, The Audacity of Hope, in October 2006.
2008 presidential campaign
On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for President of the United States. A victory in the Iowa primary made him a viable challenger to the first candidate, former First Lady and current New York Senator Hillary Clinton, whom she bested in a grueling primary campaign to claim the Democratic nomination in early June 2008.
Obama elected Joseph R. biden jr. as his running mate. biden had been a u.s. A senator from Delaware since 1972, he was a one-time Democratic candidate for president and served as chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee. Obama’s opponent was veteran Arizona Senator John S. McCain, a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war who chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. had she been elected, palin would have been the nation’s first female vice president.
As in the primary, the Obama campaign worked to build support at the grassroots level, using what supporters saw as the candidate’s natural charisma, unusual life story, and inspiring message of hope and change to draw impressive crowds to public appearances for obama, both in the united states. and on a campaign trip abroad. They worked to attract new voters, many of them young or black, both demographics they believed favored Obama, to run in the election.
A crushing financial crisis in the months leading up to the election shifted the nation’s focus on economic problems, and both Obama and McCain worked to prove they had the best plan for economic improvement. With several weeks remaining, most polls were showing Obama as the favorite. Sadly, Obama’s maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died after a battle with cancer on November 3, the day before voters went to the polls. She had been a tremendously influential force in her grandson’s life and had diligently followed her historic run for office from her Honolulu home.
On November 4, polling place lines across the country heralded a historic turnout and resulted in a Democratic victory, with Obama capturing some Republican strongholds (Virginia, Indiana) and key battleground states ( Florida, Ohio) that had been won by Republicans in the last election. Taking the stage at Chicago’s concession park with his wife, Michelle, and his two young daughters, Malia Obama and Sasha Obama, he acknowledged the historic nature of his victory as he reflected on the serious challenges ahead. they were coming “The road ahead will be long, our climb will be steep. We may not get there in a year or even a term, but America, I’ve never been more hopeful than tonight that we’ll get there. I promise you that we, as a people, will get there.”
barack obama’s first term as president
barack obama was sworn in as the first black president of the united states on january 20, 2009. obama’s inauguration set a record attendance, with 1.8 million people gathering in the cold to watch. Obama was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. with the same bible used by president abraham lincoln at his first inauguration.
One of Obama’s first acts in office was the signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which he signed just nine days after taking office, providing legal protection in the fight for equal pay for women . To deal with the financial crisis she inherited, she passed a stimulus bill, bailed out the auto industry and Wall Street, and gave working families a tax cut.
in the field of foreign policy, obama opened talks with cuba, iran and venezuela and set a date for the withdrawal of us troops from iraq. He was recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” and for his “vision and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”
On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Universal Health Care or “Obamacare.” his goal was to give all Americans access to affordable health care by requiring everyone to have health insurance, but then by providing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions (a group previously denied coverage) and by requiring companies of health insurers that spend at least 80 percent of the premiums in the provision of actual medical services.
on may 2, 2011, osama bin laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was captured and killed by seal team six. No Americans were lost in the operation, which gathered evidence on al-Qaeda.
barack obama’s second term as president
barack obama was re-elected for a second term in 2012, beating out republican mitt romney and his running mate paul ryan. the 2014 midterm elections proved challenging, as Republicans won majorities in both houses of Congress.
His second term was marked by several international events. In 2013, Obama spoke out strongly against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons against civilians, avoiding a direct attack on Syria when al-Assad agreed to accept a Russian proposal to give up chemical weapons from him.
Perhaps the defining moment of his international diplomacy was his work on the Iran nuclear deal, which allowed inspectors into Iran to make sure it was below the promised limit of enriched uranium in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. (Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, backed out of the deal in 2018.)
Another defining moment of Obama’s presidency came when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage on June 26, 2015. Obama commented that day: “We are big, vast and diverse; a nation of people with different backgrounds and beliefs, different experiences and histories, but united by our shared ideal that no matter who you are or what you look like, how you got started, or how and who you love, america is a place where you can write your own destiny.”
