Early Years
Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack
Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he
grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant
to the British.
Barack's mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in
small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression,
and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he
marched across Europe in Patton's army. Her mother went to work on a
bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill,
bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to
Hawaii.
It was there, at the University of Hawaii,
where Barack's parents met. His mother was a student there, and his
father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue
his dreams in America.
Barack's father eventually returned to Kenya,
and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in
Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from
Columbia University in 1983.
The College Years
Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught
him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and
moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a
church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor
neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.
The group had some success, but Barack had come
to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that
community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the
local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.
He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard
in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the
Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a
civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy
work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for
eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since
Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
Political Career
It has been
the rich and varied experiences of Barack Obama's life - growing up in
different places with people who had differing ideas - that have
animated his political journey. Amid the partisanship and bickering of
today's public debate, he still believes in the ability to unite people
around a politics of purpose - a politics that puts solving the
challenges of everyday Americans ahead of partisan calculation and
political gain.
In the Illinois State Senate, this meant
working with both Democrats and Republicans to help working families
get ahead by creating programs like the state Earned Income Tax Credit,
which in three years provided over $100 million in tax cuts to families
across the state. He also pushed through an expansion of early
childhood education, and after a number of inmates on death row were
found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to
require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all
capital cases.
In the U.S. Senate, he has focused on tackling
the challenges of a globalized, 21st century world with fresh thinking
and a politics that no longer settles for the lowest common
denominator. His first law was passed with Republican Tom Coburn, a
measure to rebuild trust in government by allowing every American to go
online and see how and where every dime of their tax dollars is spent.
He has also been the lead voice in championing ethics reform that would
root out Jack Abramoff-style corruption in Congress.
As a member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee,
Senator Obama has fought to help Illinois veterans get the disability
pay they were promised, while working to prepare the VA for the return
of the thousands of veterans who will need care after Iraq and
Afghanistan. Recognizing the terrorist threat posed by weapons of mass
destruction, he traveled to Russia with Republican Dick Lugar to begin
a new generation of non-proliferation efforts designed to find and
secure deadly weapons around the world. And knowing the threat we face
to our economy and our security from America's addiction to oil, he's
working to bring auto companies, unions, farmers, businesses and
politicians of both parties together to promote the greater use of
alternative fuels and higher fuel standards in our cars.
Whether it's the poverty exposed by Katrina,
the genocide in Darfur, or the role of faith in our politics, Barack
Obama continues to speak out on the issues that will define America in
the 21st century. But above all his accomplishments and experiences, he
is most proud and grateful for his family. His wife, Michelle, and his
two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6, live on Chicago's South Side
where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ.
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