Barack Obama
The 44th and current president of the United States, Barack Obama was born August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was a civil rights lawyer before pursuing a political career, first as Illinois State Senator, and later as the first African-American president of the United States. President Obama continues to enact policy changes in response to the issues of health care and economic crisis.
Early Life
Obama's parents separated when he was two years old, later divorcing. Obama, Sr. went on to Harvard to pursue Ph.D. studies, and after that backed to Kenya in 1965. In 1966, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, another East–West Center student from Indonesia. A year later, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro Ng was born. Several incidents in Indonesia left Dunham afraid for her son's safety and education so, at the age of 10, Barack was sent back to Hawaii toexive with his maternal grandparents. His mother and sister later added them.
Excelling in School
While living with his grandparents, Obama enrolled in the esteemed Punahou Academy, excelling in basketball and graduating with academic honors in 1979. As one of simply three black students at the school, Obama became conscious of racism and what it meant to be African-American. He later described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage with his own sense of person. "I began to notice there was nobody like me in the Sears, Roebuck Christmas catalog...and that Santa was a white man," he said. "I went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror with all my senses and limbs seemingly intact, looking the way I had forever looked, and wondered if something was wrong with me."
Obama too struggled with the absence of his father, who he saw simpy once more after his parents divorced, in a brief 1971 visit. " had left paradise, and nothing that my mother or grandparents told me could obviate that single, unassailable fact," he later reflected. "They couldn't describe what it might have been like had he stayed." Obama, Sr. even mislaid his legs in an automobile accident, also losing his job as a result. In 1982, he died in yet another car accident while traveling in Nairobi. Obama, Jr. was 22 years old when he received the news of his father's passing. "At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me," Obama said, "both more and fewer than a man."
After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1983 with a degree in political science. After working in the business sector for two years, Obama shifted to Chicago in 1985. There, he worked on the South area as a community organizer for low-income residents in the Roseland and the Altgeld Gardens communities.
Law Career
It was through this time that Obama, who said he "was not raised in a religious household," joined the Trinity United Church of Christ. He too visited relatives in Kenya, which included an emotional visit to the graves of his biological father and paternal grandfather. "For a long time I satamid the two graves and wept," Obama said. "I saw that my life in America—the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago—all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away."
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Obama backed from Kenya with a sense of renewal, entering Harvard Law School in 1988. The next year, he met Michelle Robinson, an associate at Sidley & Austin law firm in Chicago. She was assigned to be Obama's consultant during a summer internship at the firm, and soon the couple began dating. In February 1990, Obama was elected the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review, and he graduated magna cum laude in 1991.
After law school, Obama backed to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer, joining the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He also taught at the University of Chicago Law School, and helped organizeelector registration drives during Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign. On October 3, 1992, he and Michelle were married. They moved to Kenwood, on Chicago's South Side, and welcomed two daughters: Malia (born 1998) and Sasha (born 2001).
Ingress into Illinois Politics
Obama printed his autobiography in 1995 Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. The work received lofty praise from literary figures such as Toni Morrison and has since been printed in 10 languages, including Chinese, Swedish and Hebrew. The book had a second printing in 2004, and is currently being adapted into a children's version. The 2006 audiobook version of Dreams, which was narrated by Obama, received a Grammy award for Top Spoken Word Album.
Obama's advocacy work sprint him to run for the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat. He won election in 1996. During these years, Obama worked with both Democrats and Republicans in drafting legislation on ethics, expanded health care services, and early childhood education programs for the meager. He created tooc a state earned-income tax credit for the working poor. Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee as well, and after a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, he worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital bags.
In 2000, Obama made an unsuccessful Democratic main run for the U. S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush. Undeterred, Obama created a campaign committee in 2002, and began raising funds to run in the 2004 U.S. Senate Race. With the help of political consultant David Axelrod, Obama began assessing his prospects of a Senate win.
Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Obama was an untimely opponent of President George W. Bush's push to war with Iraq. Obama was still a state senator when he told against a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq during a assembly at Chicago's Federal Plaza in October 2002. "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars," he said. "What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives missing and in hardshipsPosted by musafir_blog at 2:50 AM 0 commentsEmail ThisBlogThis!Share to Twitter
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