Quick Facts
- NAME: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
- OCCUPATION: Lawyer, U.S. President, U.S. Representative
- BIRTH DATE: August 04, 1961 (Age: 50)
- EDUCATION: Punahou Academy, Occidental College, Columbia University, Harvard Law School
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Honolulu, Hawaii
- ZODIAC SIGN: Leo
Best Known For
Former Illinois Senator Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States. Inaugurated on January 27, 2009, he is the first African-American to serve as U.S. president.
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Barack Obama
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Barack Obama - Harvard (4:01)
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Barack Obama - The Politician
Barack Obama's rise in politics from his first step into the public sphere to being elected State Senator of Illinois.
Barack Obama - Harvard
Barack Obama attends Harvard Law School, becoming the first African-American to be elected president of the Harvard Law Review.
Barack Obama - Becoming Barack
A look at the events of Barack Obama's childhood and youth that influenced and shaped him into the person he is today.
Barack Obama. (2012). Biography.com. Retrieved 11:03, May 24, 2012 from http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369
Barack Obama [Internet]. 2012. http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369, May 24
" Barack Obama." 2012. Biography.com 24 May 2012, 11:03 http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369
' Barack Obama', Biography.com,(2012) http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369 [accessed May 24, 2012]
" Barack Obama," Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369 (accessed May 24, 2012).
Barack Obama [Internet]. Biography.com; 2012 [cited 2012 May 24]. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369.
Barack Obama, http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369 (last visited May 24, 2012).
Barack Obama, http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369 (last visited May 24, 2012).
Synopsis
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.
Contents
Quotes
"It's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you will realize your true potential."
"What Washington needs is adult supervision."
"If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress."
"My job is not to represent Washington to you, but to represent you to Washington."
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
"Hope – Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation."
"If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all."
"Yes, we can. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can."
"And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear …we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words -- yes, we can."
Early Life
President of the United States. Born Barack Hussein Obama on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas, where her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dunham's father, Stanley, enlisted in the service and marched across Europe in Patton's army. Dunham's mother, Madelyn, went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, the couple studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program and, after several moves, landed in Hawaii.
Obama's father, Barack Obama, Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. The elder Obama grew up herding goats in Africa, eventually earning a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams of college in Hawaii. While studying at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Obama, Sr. met fellow student, Ann Dunham. They married on February 2, 1961. Barack was born six months later.
Obama's parents separated when he was two years old, later divorcing. Obama, Sr. went on to Harvard to pursue Ph.D. studies, and then returned 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 to live with his maternal grandparents. His mother and sister later joined 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 only 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 self. "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 always looked, and wondered if something was wrong with me."
Obama also struggled with the absence of his father, who he saw only once more after his parents divorced, in a brief 1971 visit. "[My father] 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. eventually lost 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
Black History
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View groupWhen Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel died in 1896, he left his fortune to create an annual series of prizes for the individuals who confer "the greatest benefit on mankind." The most prestigious of the awards is the Nobel Peace Prize. Historians believe Alfred Nobel wanted to award people who work for peace to compensate for his own role in inventing dynamite. Since its establishment, the prize has gone to many courageous individuals who have fought for peace and human rights around the world.
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