{"id":4464,"date":"2024-01-30T08:33:46","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T08:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebestbiography.com\/?p=4464"},"modified":"2024-01-30T08:33:46","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T08:33:46","slug":"barack-obama-biography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebestbiography.com\/barack-obama-biography\/","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama (44th U.S. President) Biography"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States. His story is the American story \u2014 values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others.<\/p>

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Barack Obama Biography<\/strong><\/h2>

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Born<\/strong><\/td>4 August 1961 (age 62\u00a0years)<\/td><\/tr>
Children<\/strong><\/td>\u00a0Malia Ann Obama,\u00a0
Sasha Obama<\/td><\/tr>
Parents<\/strong><\/td>\u00a0Barack Obama Sr.,\u00a0
Stanley Ann Dunham<\/td><\/tr>
Spouse<\/strong><\/td>\u00a0Michelle Obama\u00a0<\/td><\/tr>
Presidential term<\/strong><\/td>20 January 2009 \u2013 20 January 2017<\/td><\/tr>
Siblings<\/strong><\/td>Malik Obama,\u00a0
Maya Soetoro-Ng,\u00a0
George Obama<\/td><\/tr>
Instagram<\/strong><\/td>@Barack Obama<\/a><\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Twitter<\/strong><\/td>@Barack Obama<\/a><\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>

Barack Obama\u2019s Early Life
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Obama’s father, Barack Hussein Obama, was born into the Luo ethnic group and raised in a small town in Kenya’s Nyanza Province. After receiving a scholarship to study economics at the University of Hawaii, he moved to Hawaii in 1959 with his family and married Ann Dunham, a white lady from Wichita, Kansas, whose father had served in the American Army during World War II and worked on oil rigs during the Great Depression. August 4, 1961, saw the Honolulu birth of Barack Hussein Obama Jr., the son of Barack and Ann.<\/p>

Obama\u2019s parents later separated, and Barack Sr. went back to Kenya. He would see his son only once more before dying in a car accident in 1982. Ann remarried in 1965. She and her new husband, an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro, moved with her young son to Jakarta in the late 1960s, where Ann worked at the U.S. embassy. Obama\u2019s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng, was born in Jakarta in 1970.<\/p>

Barack Obama\u2019s Education<\/strong><\/h2>

Obama moved back to Hawaii when he was ten years old to live with his maternal grandparents. As he described in his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father, he first became aware of the conflicts arising from his mixed-race upbringing while attending the prestigious Punahou School. He attended Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia University in New York City, where he earned a political science degree in 1983.<\/p>

President Barack Obama<\/strong><\/h2>

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Personal<\/strong><\/h3>

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Barack Hussein Obama II was born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to parents Barack H. Obama, Sr., and Stanley Ann Dunham. His parents divorced when he was 2 years old and he was raised by his mother, Ann, and maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. His mother <\/a>later married Lolo Soetoro, and his sister Maya was born in 1970. (He also has several siblings on his father\u2019s side.)<\/p>

Obama moved with his family to Indonesia in 1967, where he attended local Indonesian schools and received additional lessons via U.S. correspondence courses under his mother\u2019s direction.<\/p>

He returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents in 1971 and attended Punahou School, from which he graduated in 1979. Obama first attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, before transferring to Columbia University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1983.<\/p>

After graduation, Obama briefly worked as an analyst at Business International Corporation in New York City, before changing his career direction toward community service organizing. He relocated to Chicago, Illinois, in 1985 when he accepted a job with the Developing Communities Project. Eventually rising to the role of Director, Obama worked with low-income communities on Chicago\u2019s South Side, often collaborating with local religious organizations and civic groups.<\/p>

After three years of community organizing, Obama enrolled in Harvard Law School. After completing his first year, he worked as a summer associate at Chicago corporate law firm of Sidley & Austin, where his mentor was Michelle Robinson, his future wife.<\/p>

Obama was elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, prior to graduating magna cum laude<\/em> in 1991. He returned to Chicago in 1992 and served as the Illinois Executive Director of PROJECT VOTE!. In 1993, he was hired as an associate at the firm of Davis Miner Barnhill & Gallard, where he largely worked on voting rights cases.<\/p>

Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson were married in 1992 at Chicago\u2019s Trinity United Church of Christ. They have two daughters, Malia and Natasha \u201cSasha.\u201d In the summer of 1995, Obama\u2019s first book was published. Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance <\/em>detailed his personal history and search for identity.<\/p>

Political Career<\/strong><\/h3>

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In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate from the thirteenth district. As a State Senator, he served as Democratic Spokesperson for Public Health and Welfare Committee and Co-Chairman of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, in addition to being a member of the Judiciary and Revenue Committees. He also worked as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago from 1996 until 2004, teaching three courses per year.<\/p>

Obama was elected to a second term in the Illinois State Senate in November 1998. In 2000, Obama made his first run for the U.S. Congress when he sought the Democratic U.S. House seat in Illinois First District. He lost to incumbent Representative Bobby Rush by a margin of more than 2-to-1.<\/p>

In July 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, held in Boston, Massachusetts. He was elected as the junior Senator from Illinois in November 2004. While serving as U.S. Senator from Illinois, Obama completed his second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream<\/em>, published in October 2006.<\/p>

On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for President of the United States. He accepted the Democratic Party\u2019s nomination at Invesco Stadium in Denver, Colorado on August 28, 2008. On November 4, 2008, Obama became the first African-American to be elected President. He resigned his seat in the U.S. Senate on November 16, 2008.<\/p>

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009.<\/p>

Presidential Administration<\/strong><\/h2>

Domestic policy decisions dominated the first 100 Days of the Obama administration. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which encourages fair pay for all workers and established new methods of protesting unfair paychecks, was the first signed legislation of the administration. To combat the effects of the Great Recession, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (known as the Recovery Act) in February 2009, which outlined a policy to create additional jobs, extend unemployment benefits, and established the President\u2019s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.<\/p>

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In March 2010, after announcing his intent for healthcare reform in a 2009 address to Congress, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (also known as \u201cObamacare\u201d), establishing the most sweeping reforms of the American healthcare system in recent history. To improve access to healthcare coverage, the Act included a Patient\u2019s Bill of Rights to end discrimination by insurance companies based on pre-existing conditions. <\/p><\/div><\/div>

Among its other reforms, the Act strengthened Medicare and required the insurer to cover preventative screenings for cancer, diabetes, and blood pressure disorders. The Obama administration centered its foreign policy on drawing down the number of American forces stationed overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama also committed to destroying the ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) terrorist organization through the administration\u2019s comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy, including systematic airstrikes against ISIL, providing additional support to forces fighting ISIL on the ground, increased cooperation with counter-terrorism partners, and humanitarian assistance to civilians.<\/p>

On May 2, 2011, President Obama announced to the nation that the United States had conducted an operation that resulted in the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Following leads from the intelligence community, the raid on bin Laden\u2019s Abbottabad compound was conducted with no American casualties.<\/p>

President Obama also obtained congressional approval for military action against Syria following the Syrian regime\u2019s use of chemical weapons on civilians. Negotiations with Russia led to the signing of a New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty)<\/em> Treaty, which limited the two countries to fewer strategic arms over the course of seven years through inspections and verification. In 2015, the U.S. and other partners reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, which aimed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and committed Iran to further monitoring of all Iranian nuclear activities.<\/p>

President Obama announced plans to normalize foreign relations with Cuba in conjunction with President Castro, including reopening the U.S. Embassy in Havana in July 2015. The First Family visited Cuba in March 2016, making President Obama the first sitting President to visit the nation in 90 years.<\/p>

Post-Presidency<\/strong><\/h2>

President and Mrs. Obama returned to their lives as private citizens on January 20, 2017.<\/p>

Works Published by Barack Obama<\/strong><\/h2>