Barack Obama
Barack Obama was born on the 4th of August 1961, at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the only president born outside the contiguous 48 states. His mother Ann Dunham was an 18-year-old American from Wichita Kansas with English Welsh German Swiss and Irish descent. His father Barack Obama Sr. was a 27-year-old Kenyan Luo man from Nyang'oma Kogelo who had been born inside the euphorbia hedges of the K'obama homestead on the 18th of June 1934. The couple met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa where his father was a foreign student on a scholarship. They married in Wailuku Hawaii on the 2nd of February 1961 six months before Obama was born.
In late August 1961 a few weeks after he was born Barack and his mother moved to the University of Washington in Seattle where they lived for a year. During that time Barack's father completed his undergraduate degree in economics in Hawaii graduating in June 1962. He left to attend graduate school on a scholarship at Harvard University where he earned a Master of Arts in economics. Obama's parents divorced in March 1964. Obama Sr. returned to Kenya in 1964 where he married for a third time and worked for the Kenyan government as the senior economic analyst in the Ministry of Finance. He visited his son in Hawaii only once at Christmas 1971 before he was killed in an automobile accident in 1982 when Obama was 21 years old.
Recalling his early childhood Obama said: "That my father looked nothing like the people around me, that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk, barely registered in my mind." In 1963 Dunham met Lolo Soetoro at the University of Hawai'i who was an Indonesian East, West Center graduate student in geography. The couple married on Molokai on the 15th of March 1965. After two one-year extensions of his J-1 visa Lolo returned to Indonesia in 1966. His wife and stepson followed sixteen months later in 1967. The family initially lived in the Menteng Dalam neighborhood in the Tebet district of South Jakarta. From 1970 they lived in a wealthier neighborhood in the Menteng district of Central Jakarta.
When he was six years old Obama and his mother had moved to Indonesia to join his stepfather. From age six to ten he was registered in school as Barry and attended local Indonesian-language schools: Sekolah Dasar Katolik Santo Fransiskus Asisi for two years and Sekolah Dasar Negeri Menteng 01 for one and a half years supplemented by English-language Calvert School homeschooling by his mother. As a result of his four years in Jakarta he was able to speak Indonesian fluently as a child. During his time in Indonesia Obama's stepfather taught him to be resilient and gave him "a pretty hardheaded assessment of how the world works".
In 1971 Obama returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents Madelyn and Stanley Dunham. He attended Punahou School, a private college preparatory school, with the aid of a scholarship from fifth grade until he graduated from high school in 1979. In high school Obama continued to use the nickname Barry which he kept until making a visit to Kenya in 1980. He lived with his mother and half-sister Maya Soetoro in Hawaii for three years from 1972 to 1975 while his mother was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Hawaii. Obama chose to stay in Hawaii when his mother and half-sister returned to Indonesia in 1975 so his mother could begin anthropology field work.
After graduating from high school in 1979 Obama moved to Los Angeles to attend Occidental College on a full scholarship. In February 1981 Obama made his first public speech calling for Occidental to participate in the disinvestment from South Africa in response to that nation's policy of apartheid. Later in 1981 he transferred to Columbia University in New York City as a junior where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations and in English literature and lived off-campus on West 109th Street. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1983 and a 3.7 GPA. Two years after graduating from Columbia Obama moved from New York to Chicago when he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project a faith-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Roseland West Pullman and Riverdale on Chicago's South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988.
In mid-1988 he traveled for the first time in Europe for three weeks and then for five weeks in Kenya where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time. Despite being offered a full scholarship to Northwestern University School of Law Obama enrolled at Harvard Law School in the fall of 1988 living in nearby Somerville Massachusetts. He was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review at the end of his first year president of the journal in his second year and research assistant to the constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe while at Harvard. During his summers he returned to Chicago where he worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations which evolved into a personal memoir. The manuscript was published in mid-1995 as Dreams from My Father.
Obama graduated from Harvard Law in 1991 with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude. In 1991 Obama accepted a two-year position as Visiting Law and Government Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School to work on his first book. He then taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years first as a lecturer from 1992 to 1996 and then as a senior lecturer from 1996 to 2004. From April to October 1992 Obama directed Illinois's Project Vote a voter registration campaign with ten staffers and seven hundred volunteer registrars; it achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.
In May 2002 Obama commissioned a poll to assess his prospects in a 2004 U.S. Senate race. He created a campaign committee began raising funds and lined up political media consultant David Axelrod by August 2002. Obama formally announced his candidacy in January 2003. On the 2nd of October 2002 the day President Bush and Congress agreed on the joint resolution authorizing the Iraq War Obama addressed the first high-profile Chicago anti-Iraq War rally and spoke out against the war. In the March 2004 primary election Obama won in an unexpected landslide which overnight made him a rising star within the national Democratic Party started speculation about a presidential future and led to the reissue of his memoir Dreams from My Father.
In July 2004 Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention seen by nine million viewers. His speech was well received and elevated his status within the Democratic Party. Obama's expected opponent in the general election Republican primary winner Jack Ryan withdrew from the race in June 2004. Six weeks later Alan Keyes accepted the Republican nomination to replace Ryan. In the November 2004 general election Obama won with 70 percent of the vote the largest margin of victory for a Senate candidate in Illinois history. He took 92 of the state's 102 counties including several where Democrats traditionally do not perform well.
On the 10th of February 2007 Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield Illinois. The choice of the announcement site was viewed as symbolic as it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his "House Divided" speech in 1858. Numerous candidates entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries. The field narrowed to Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton after early contests with the race remaining close throughout the primary process but Obama gained a steady lead in pledged delegates due to better long-range planning superior fundraising dominant organizing in caucus states and better exploitation of delegate allocation rules. On the 2nd of June 2008 Obama had received enough votes to clinch his nomination. After an initial hesitation to concede on June 7 Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed Obama.
On the 23rd of August 2008 Obama announced his selection of Delaware senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate. At the Democratic National Convention in Denver Colorado Hillary Clinton called for her supporters to endorse Obama and she and Bill Clinton gave convention speeches in his support. Obama delivered his acceptance speech at Invesco Field at Mile High stadium to a crowd of about eighty-four thousand; the speech was viewed by over three million people worldwide. During both the primary process and the general election Obama's campaign set numerous fundraising records particularly in the quantity of small donations. On the 19th of June 2008 Obama became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn down public financing in the general election since the system was created in 1976.
On the 17th of February 2009 Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 a $787billion economic stimulus package aimed at helping the economy recover from the deepening worldwide recession. The act includes increased federal spending for health care infrastructure education various tax breaks and incentives and direct assistance to individuals. Obama intervened in the troubled automotive industry in March 2009 renewing loans for General Motors GM and Chrysler to continue operations while reorganizing. Over the following months the White House set terms for both firms' bankruptcies including the sale of Chrysler to Italian automaker Fiat and a reorganization of GM giving the U.S. government a temporary 60 percent equity stake in the company.
In July 2009 Obama launched the Priority Enforcement Program an immigration enforcement program that had been pioneered by George W. Bush and the Secure Communities fingerprinting and immigration status data-sharing program. In a major space policy speech in April 2010 Obama announced a planned change in direction at NASA the U.S. space agency. He ended plans for a return of human spaceflight to the moon and development of the Ares I rocket Ares V rocket and Constellation program in favor of funding earth science projects a new rocket type research and development for an eventual crewed mission to Mars and ongoing missions to the International Space Station.
On the 16th of January 2013 one month after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting Obama signed 23 executive orders and outlined a series of sweeping proposals regarding gun control. He urged Congress to reintroduce an expired ban on military-style assault weapons such as those used in several recent mass shootings impose limits on ammunition magazines to 10 rounds introduce background checks on all gun sales pass a ban on possession and sale of armor-piercing bullets introduce harsher penalties for gun-traffickers especially unlicensed dealers who buy arms for criminals and approving the appointment of the head of the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives for the first time since 2006.
On the 21st of March 2010 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ACA colloquially "Obamacare" passed by the Senate in December was passed in the House by a vote of 219 to 212. Obama signed the bill into law on the 23rd of March 2010. The ACA includes health-related provisions most of which took effect in 2014 including expanding Medicaid eligibility for people making up to 133 percentof the federal poverty level FPL starting in 2014 subsidizing insurance premiums for people making up to 400 percentof the FPL $88,000 for family of four in 2010 so their maximum "out-of-pocket" payment for annual premiums will be from 2 percent to 9.5 percent of income providing incentives for businesses to provide health care benefits prohibiting denial of coverage and denial of claims based on pre-existing conditions establishing health insurance exchanges prohibiting annual coverage caps and support for medical research.
In June 2010 the Federal Reserve noted that economic activity continued to increase but its pace had slowed and chairman Ben Bernanke said the economic outlook was "unusually uncertain". Overall the economy expanded at a rate of 2.9 percent in 2010. The Congressional Budget Office CBO and a broad range of economists credit Obama's stimulus plan for economic growth. The CBO released a report stating that the stimulus bill increased employment by 1, 2.1million while conceding that "it is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package." Although an April 2010 survey of members of the National Association for Business Economics showed an increase in job creation over a similar January survey for the first time in two years 73 percent of 68 respondents believed the stimulus bill has had no impact on employment.
On the 27th of February 2009 Obama announced that combat operations in Iraq would end within 18 months. The Obama administration scheduled the withdrawal of combat troops to be completed by August 2010 decreasing troop's levels from 142,000 while leaving a transitional force of about 50,000 in Iraq until the end of 2011. On the 19th of August 2010 the last U.S. combat brigade exited Iraq. Remaining troops transitioned from combat operations to counter-terrorism and the training equipping and advising of Iraqi security forces. On the 31st of August 2010 Obama announced that the United States combat mission in Iraq was over.
Starting with information received from Central Intelligence Agency operatives in July 2010 the CIA developed intelligence over the next several months that determined what they believed to be the hideout of Osama bin Laden. He was living in seclusion in a large compound in Abbottabad Pakistan a suburban area from Islamabad. CIA head Leon Panetta reported this intelligence to President Obama in March 2011. Meeting with his national security advisers over the course of the next six weeks Obama rejected a plan to bomb the compound and authorized a "surgical raid" to be conducted by United States Navy SEALs. The operation took place on the 1st of May 2011 and resulted in the shooting death of bin Laden and the seizure of papers computer drives and disks from the compound. DNA testing was one of five methods used to positively identify bin Laden's corpse which was buried at sea several hours later.
In February and March 2009 Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made separate overseas trips to announce a "new era" in U.S. foreign relations with Russia and Europe using the terms "break" and "reset" to signal major changes from the policies of the preceding administration. On the 4th of June 2009 Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University in Egypt calling for "A New Beginning" in relations between the Islamic world and the United States and promoting Middle East peace.
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Common questions
When and where was Barack Obama born?
Barack Obama was born on the 4th of August 1961 at Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the only president born outside the contiguous 48 states.
Who were the parents of Barack Obama and when did they meet?
Barack Obama's mother Ann Dunham was an American from Wichita Kansas and his father Barack Obama Sr. was a Kenyan Luo man from Nyang'oma Kogelo. The couple met in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa and married on the 2nd of February 1961.
Where did Barack Obama attend school during his childhood years?
From age six to ten Barack Obama attended local Indonesian-language schools including Sekolah Dasar Katolik Santo Fransiskus Asisi and Sekolah Dasar Negeri Menteng 01 while living in Jakarta. After returning to Honolulu he attended Punahou School from fifth grade until graduating high school in 1979.
What universities did Barack Obama attend and what degrees did he earn?
Barack Obama attended Occidental College before transferring to Columbia University where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1983. He later enrolled at Harvard Law School in 1988 and graduated with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude in 1991.
When did Barack Obama announce his candidacy for President of the United States?
On the 10th of February 2007 Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield Illinois. He secured the Democratic nomination on the 2nd of June 2008 after winning enough votes to clinch the position.