Barack Obama Biography

in the news…

June 24, 2009

President Obama spoke out against Iran on Tuesday (June 23, 2009), condemning the government for its treatment of election protesters. Obama also accused Irans leaders of fabricating charges against the United States.
In his strongest comments since the protests began, Obama assailed the Iranian government during a White House news conference, saying he was "appalled and outraged" by the abuse and, in some cases, killings of election protestors.

Obama praised what he called the courage and dignity of the demonstrators, and condemned the loss of life in Iran. "While this loss is raw and extraordinarily painful," he said, "we also know this: Those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history."
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has recently announced that the Iranian nation will not yield to the pressure of protestors over the recent election. Several people have been killed since the June 12th poll that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power. Many say the outcome was rigged against candidate Hossein Musavi. "I had insisted and will insist on implementing the law on the election issue," Khamenei said. "Neither the establishment nor the nation will yield to pressure at any cost."

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Barack Hussein Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. He grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British. Although reared among Muslims, Obama, Sr., became an atheist at some point.

Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he signed up for service in World War II and marched across Europe in Patton’s army. Dunham’s mother went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G. I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved to Hawaii.

Meantime, Barack’s father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya pursue his dreams in Hawaii. At the time of his birth, Obama’s parents were students at the East–West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Obama’s parents separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama’s father went to Harvard to pursue Ph. D. studies and then returned to Kenya.

His mother married Lolo Soetoro, another East–West Center student from Indonesia. In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro–Ng was born. Obama attended schools in Jakarta, where classes were taught in the Indonesian language.

Four years later when Barack (commonly known throughout his early years as "Barry") was ten, he returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, and later his mother (who died of ovarian cancer in 1995).

He was enrolled in the fifth grade at the esteemed Punahou Academy, graduating with honors in 1979. He was only one of three black students at the school. This is where Obama first became conscious of racism and what it meant to be an African–American.

In his memoir, Obama described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. He saw his biological father (who died in a 1982 car accident) only once (in 1971) after his parents divorced. And he admitted using alcohol, marijuana and cocaine during his teenage years.

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.