Born in 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. of Kenya and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas, Barack Hussein Obama II has made history after being elected the first African American President of the United States.
When Obama was two-years-old, his father returned to Kenya after divorcing his mother. Obama was only able to see his father once more before he died in an automobile accident in 1982. After his mother remarried, the family moved to Indonesia where Obama lived until he was ten, and then returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents until graduating from high school in 1979.
Obama then moved to California where he attended Occidental College for two years. Transferring to Columbia University in New York City, it was there he studied political science specializing in international relations. After graduating in 1983, he began work at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group. Spending four years in NYC, he then moved to Chicago where he worked as director of the Developing Communities Project for three years. He achieved many an accomplishment in this position such as helping set up a job training program, a tenants' rights organization, and a college preparatory tutoring program. In 1988, his career path took another turn when he began law school at Harvard University. He was elected as the first black president of the
Law Review where he took the role as editor-in-chief, overseeing a group of 80 editors that comprised the
Law Review's staff. While at Harvard he also worked as a summer associate at law firms Sidley & Austin and Hopkins & Sutter. It was there at his summer position at Sidley & Austin where he met wife Michelle Robinson, his advisor at the firm. After graduating
magna cum laude in 1991, he returned to Chicago. After his return, and all of the publicity he had received from being president of the
Law Review, the University of Chicago Law School offered Obama a fellowship to work on his book about race relations.
Declining his first date offer, Robinson and Obama soon hit it off and were married in October 1992. Their first daughter Malia Ann was born in 1998 and Natasha (known as Sasha) was born in 2001. With seven half-siblings from his father’s side and a half-sister from his mother’s second marriage, Obama often calls his holiday gatherings a “mini-United Nations.” A fan of basketball, in which he played in high school, Obama
In order to concentrate completely on his new project, Michelle and him retreated to Bali where he wrote for several months.
Dreams From My Father, a personal memoir, was published in 1995. Over the next years, Obama directed Project Vote in Illinois, achieving great numbers in registering African Americans to vote in the state, leading to his recognition on the list of "Forty under 40" powers to be. For the next 12 years he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School and became a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies (wife Michelle became the founding executive director after he resigned). In 1996 Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate where he reformed ethic and health care laws. Due to all of his hard work and dedication, Obama was reelected in both 1998 and 2000. Announcing his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2003, Obama was sworn into the position as senator in January 2005. In 2008, Obama was ranked the eleventh most powerful Senator by Congress.org.
In the same spot where Abraham Lincoln delivered his “House Divided” speech in 1858, Obama announced his presidential candidacy in February 2007. Throughout his campaign, he emphasized how important ending the Iraq war would be as well as providing universal health care. He became the democratic nominee soon after, beating out Hillary Clinton, and chose Joe Biden to be his vice presidential running mate.
On Nov. 4th, Obama made history, beating out Republican candidate John McCain to become the first African American to be elected as President of the United States. In his victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park, he said, “change has come to America.” An avid basketball player (he played a game the day of the election!), a former civil rights attorney, author, a doting family man, and now president, Obama has been through a lot, but all worth it as he has achieved great success.
