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Quick Facts
- NAME: Barack Obama
- OCCUPATION: Lawyer, U.S. President, U.S. Representative
- BIRTH DATE: August 04, 1961 (Age: 51)
- EDUCATION: Punahou Academy, Occidental College, Columbia University, Harvard Law School
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Honolulu, Hawaii
- Full Name: Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
- AKA: Barack Obama
- ZODIAC SIGN: Leo
Best Known For
Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States, and the first African American to serve as U.S. president. First elected to the presidency in 2008, he won a second term in 2012.
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Barack Obama - America's First African-American President (2:40)
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Barack Obama - Mini Biography
Born in Honolulu, Barack Obama went on to become President of the Harvard Law Review. In 2008, he was elected President of the United States, becoming the first African-American commander-in-chief.
Barack Obama - America's First African-American President
On November 4th, 2008, Barack Obama was elected President, making him the first African-American President of the United States. His victory made a powerful statement about how far the country has come on the issue of race.
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 - 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.
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Play NowBarack Obama. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 07:22, may 22, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369.
Barack Obama. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369 [Accessed 22 may 2013].
"Barack Obama." 2013. The Biography Channel website. may 22 2013, 07:22 http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369.
"Barack Obama," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369 [accessed may 22, 2013].
"Barack Obama," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369 (accessed may 22, 2013).
Barack Obama [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 may 22] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369.
Barack Obama, http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369 (last visited may 22, 2013).
Barack Obama. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/barack-obama-12782369. Accessed may 22, 2013.
Synopsis
Born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States. He was a civil-rights lawyer and teacher before pursuing a political career. He was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, serving from 1997 to 2004. He was elected to the U.S. presidency in 2008,
Contents
Quotes
"I guarantee you we will move this country forward. We will finish what we started. And we'll remind the world just why it is the United States of America is the greatest nation on Earth."
"We don't quit. I don't quit. Let's sieze this moment to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and strengthen our union once more."
"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."
and won re-election in 2012 against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. President Obama continues to enact policy changes in response to the issues of health care and economic crisis.
Early Life
Barack Hussein Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas, where her father worked on oil rigs during the Great 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.
Barack Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Obama Sr. 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, and they married on February 2, 1961. Barack was born six months later.
Obama did not have a relationship with his father as a child. When his son was still an infant, Obama Sr. relocated to Massachusetts to attend Harvard University, pursuing a Ph.D. Barack's parents officially separated several months later and ultimately divorced in March 1964, when their son was 2. In 1965, Obama Sr. returned to Kenya.
In 1965, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an East–West Center student from Indonesia. A year later, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Barack'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."
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