Barack Obama – The Biography
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Barack Obama – The Biography
Barack Hussein Obama born on August 4, 1961 is the 44th and the current President of the United States of America. Barack Obama, born to a white mother Ann Dunham, and a black Kenyan father Barack Obama Sr., is the first African American to be named as the President of the United States of America. Barack Obama has also previously served as a Senator from Illinois till November 2008 when he was elected as the President of the United States of America.
Barack Obama’s parents were students at the University of Hawaii. After that his father left for Harvard leaving behind his mother and Barack Obama and eventually he returned to Kenya to work as a government economist. His father only saw him once after that before dying in an accident in 1982. His mother later married an Indonesian student, Lolo Soetoro, studying college in Hawaii and moved to Jakarta when he was six years old. For the next four years, Obama studied in local schools in Jakarta. In 1971, he returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. Barack Obama’s grandfather, Stanley Armour Dunham, was a furniture salesman and his grandmother, Madelyn, used to work in a bank. The family lived in a small apartment but Barack Obama managed to get into Hawaii’s top prep school PunahouSchool. In 1979, Obama attended OccidentalUniversity before moving on to ColumbiaUniversity two years later. He graduated with a B.A. in 1983 but found New York’s racial abuse unbearable.
After four years in New York, he moved to Chicago. He worked there for three years as the Director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP). In 1988, he traveled to Europe for the first time and from there he went to Kenya to meet his paternal relatives. Barack Obama then attended the HarvardLawSchool in late 1988 and became the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Obama gained national media attention when he was elected as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduating in 1991, he returned to Chicago.
He started teaching Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 till 2004. Obama has served three times as a Senator from Illinois from 1997 to 2004. In 2004 Obama ran for United States Senate and during that campaign several events brought him national attention. He became a US Senator in November 2004 receiving 70% of the votes as compared to his 27% garnered by Alan Keyes of the Republican Party. That was the largest margin victory in the history of Illinois. Obama was the fifth African American Senator in the history of the United States of America. He was ranked as the most liberal senator in 2007. In November 2008, he resigned from his senate seat.
On February 10, 2007, Obama states his desire to become the President of the United States of America. A large number of candidates enrolled in the Democratic Party presidential preliminary and it narrowed down to Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. On June 7, Hilary Clinton stood down giving a clear run at the presidency to Barack Obama against Senator John McCain of the Republican Party. Barack Obama selected Joe Bidden as his number two. Three presidential debates were held between Obama and McCain between September and October 2008. In November 2008, Obama won the elections with 52.9% popular votes. Obama took charge of the office on the 20th of January 2009 as the President of the United States of America.
On the personal front, Obama has seven siblings. Obama’s mother died just two days before his election for Presidency. Obama was known as Barry in his childhood. Obama met Michelle Robinson when he was employed in the Chicago Law Firm. They started dating and were later engaged in 1991. They got married in October 1992. The couple has two daughters, Malia Ann born on July 4, 1998 and Natasha born on June 10, 2001.
Barack Obama is sometimes referred to as an exceptional orator. In October 2009, Barack Obama won the Nobel Prize "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples". The committee highlighted his efforts to promote nuclear nonproliferation and helping to reach out to the Muslim world. Obama is the fourth president to be awarded the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize drew both praise and criticism from the world leaders and the media. Some termed it as premature.
