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Barack Obama

Barack Obama was born August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to Harvard University-educated economist Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a native of Kenya and a Muslim. His mother is Shirley Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. His first name comes from the word that means "blessed by God" in Arabic. At the time of Obama's birth, both his parents were students at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

STRUGGLING WITH HIS IDENTITY ...

When Barack was two years old, his parents divorced and his father eventually returned to Kenya. Although Obama’s father only visited him once after he left, Barack grew up with stories of his father’s brilliant mind. Later, his mother married Lolo Soetoro from Indonesia. The family moved to Jakarta, where Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng was born.

At 10, Barack moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents and to attend a prestigious school. He struggled with his identity, at one point going by the name "Barry". Reflecting upon this time in his 1995 book, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Barack has said that he, "ended up getting involved in drugs and drinking too much" in order to “push questions of who I was out of my mind, flatten out the landscape of my heart, and blur the edges of my memory.”

... THEN TURNING HIS LIFE AROUND

Despite the strikes against him, Barack turned his life around, honing his mind at Hawaii’s top prep academy, Punahou School, where the basketball court became a place of refuge as he began dealing with his personal self-identity. 

As his coach, Chris McLachlin, recalls, Barack never went anywhere without his basketball, a ball given to him by his absent father. And he remembers Obama's drive, always pushing for more minutes on the court. He says that while Obama wasn't the best on the team, he might have worked the hardest.  As his coach put it,

"I can remember Barack being here early and playing before school. I remember him bouncing his ball, books in one hand, ball in the other hand. Shooting baskets during recess or at lunchtime. I remember him shooting baskets after school. I remember him being, probably, in the gym when he wasn't supposed to be. When there wasn't a teacher but he went there anyway, he just had to shoot."

Upon finishing high school, Barack studied for two years at Occidental College (shown here as a student at Occidental) before transferring to Columbia College at Columbia University. There he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations and became interested in community activism.

ROOTS IN COMMUNITY ACTIVISM & THE LAW

After graduating in 1983, he worked for a year in business and then moved to Chicago, where he took up community organizing in the Altgeld Gardens housing project on the city's South Side. It was during this time that he converted to Christianity.

Barack left Chicago for three years to study law at Harvard University where he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude. While working one summer at a corporate law firm in 1989, Obama met Michelle Robinson, then an associate attorney at the firm, and married her in 1992. After law school, Barack returned to being a community organizer in Chicago. Soon after, he joined a local civil rights law firm and became a lecturer of constitutional law at the University of Chicago.

ON TO POLITICS:
TRYING TO FIND COMMON GROUND

In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate from the south side Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park. In 2000, Barack ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary against incumbent U. S. Congressman, Representative Bobby Rush. Rush received 61% of the vote. Obama received only 30%.

After the loss, Obama rededicated his efforts to the state Senate where he authored one of the most progressive death penalty reform laws in the nation. He also pushed through legislation that would force insurance companies to cover routine mammogram's. Though known as a principled liberal, Obama was highly regarded for his ability to build coalitions and persuade opponents. In one instance, he successfully convinced the Fraternal Order of Police and the National Rifle Association to endorse a bill they had previously opposed.

In the summer of 2004 Barack Obama was the Keynote Speaker at the Democratic Party Convention. His speech outlined his family's pursuit of the American Dream and his belief in a “generous America.” He said his maternal grandfather, after serving in World War II, received FHA and GI Bill assistance. And, they had high hopes for their daughter because "in a generous America you don't have to be rich to achieve your potential." But, he went on to say, "we have more work to do" for people not able to realize the American Dream, maintaining that self-responsibility is vital and that people "don't expect government to solve all their problems." In November of that year, Barack Obama was overwhelmingly elected as United States Senator from the State of Illinois.

THE WRITTEN WORD:
REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST & HOPES FOR THE FUTURE

Barack Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, was published in 1995 and re-released in 2004 with new features. In this memoir, he describes how the son of an African father and a white American mother searched for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York where Barack learns that his father has been killed in a car accident in Africa. This puts him on an emotional odyssey retracing his mother’s family migration from Kansas to Hawaii, then proceeding to Kenya where he meets the African side of his family. It concludes describing how Barack Obama has reconciled and come to value his divided inheritance.

In December 2004, Barack Obama made a $1.9 million deal for three books. The first, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming the American Dream, was published October 2006 and discusses his political convictions. The second is to be a children's book co-written with his wife Michelle and their two young daughters Malia and Sasha, with profits going to charity. The content of the third book has not been announced.

Early in 2007 Barack Obama entered the race to become the 2008 Democratic Party candidate for President of the United States.  He went on to win the nomination at the Democratic Party Convention in August, the general election in November, and on January 20, 2009 Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States.  

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On July 16, 2009 President Obama gave a speech at the 100th Anniversary of the NAACP that included the comments printed below.  [Click here to download a PDF copy of the entire speech.] 

Your destiny is in your hands.  "We have to say to our children, Yes, if you're African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not. But that's not a reason to get bad grades, that's not a reason to cut class, that's not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands - and don't you forget that."

Set your sights higher.  "We must be pushing our kids to set their sights higher. They might think they've got a pretty good jump shot or a pretty good flow, but our kids can't all aspire to be the next LeBron or Lil Wayne. I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court Justice. I want them aspiring to be President of the United States."

Rising sun of a new day begun.  "One hundred years from now, on the 200th anniversary of the NAACP, let it be said that this generation did its part; that we too ran the race; full of the faith that our dark past has taught us, full of the hope that the present has brought us, we faced, in our own lives and all across this nation, the rising sun of a new day begun. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America."