Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first person of African- American descent who served as U.S. president from Harvard Law ( Faculty of Law, Harvard University ). He worked as a community organizer, and also worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He also taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. After an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, Obama was elected to the Senate in November 2004. Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004.
As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109. Congress, Obama helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In Congress he helped create legislation on elections, negotiations and fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for U.S. military personnel returning from combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Barack Obama was born at Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, of Mrs. Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas from predominately English descent. Obama 's father was Barack Obama, Sr., a Luo from Nyang'oma Kogelo, Nyanza Province, Kenya. His parents met in 1960 while attending the event at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was a foreign student. The couple married on February 2, 1961, they separated when Obama was two years old, and divorced in 1964. Obama 's father returned to Kenya and saw his son only once more before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.
After her divorce, Dunham married Indonesian student Lolo Soetoro, they met while attending college in Hawaii. When Suharto as a military leader in power in 1967 in the country of Indonesia. Then Obama and his family moved to Indonesia. Small Obama then attended local schools in Jakarta, such as Besuki Public School and St. Francis of Assisi School, until he was ten years old.
He then returned to Honolulu to live with his mother's grandfather / grandmother, Madelyn and Stanley Armour Dunham, while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade in 1971 until his graduation from high school in 1979. Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972 for five years, then in 1977 returned to Indonesia, where he worked as a worker in the field of anthropology. He lived there spent the rest of his life, and then returned to Hawaii in 1994. She died of ovarian cancer in 1995.
After senior high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. Obama graduated with a BA from Columbia in 1983. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.
After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project ( DCP ), a church - based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland ( Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale ) on Chicago 's far South Side. He worked there for three years from June 1985 to May 1988. For three years as the DCP 's director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $ 70,000 to $ 400,000 including help setting up job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and tenants rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community agency that organized. In mid- 1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three months and then for five months in Kenya, where he met many people with his father for the first time.
Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. He was selected as an editor on the Harvard Law Review at the end of the first year and as president of the journal in his second year. During the summer, he returned to Chicago where he worked as a lawyer law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating with a Juris Doctor ( JD ) magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago.
From April to October 1992, Obama directed Illinois 's Project Vote, a voter registration drive with a staff of ten and seven hundred volunteers ; was achieved with registration purposes 150,000 400,000 Africa is not listed in the American state, and led to Crain 's Chicago Business name Obama its 1993 list " 40 under Forty " powers to it.
After twelve years, Obama served as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law. He was first classified as a Lecturer 1992-1996, and then as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004. [ 39 ] He also joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a twelve- attorney law firm specializing civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004,
with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.
Obama is a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in early 1993. He served from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 became the first foundation to fund the Developing Communities Project, and also from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Joyce Foundation. Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995-2002, and was president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995 to 1999. He also worked on the board of directors of the Chicago Lawyers ' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Environmental Technology Centre, and Lugenia Burns Hope Center.
Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, following State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois 's 13th District, which then spanned Chicago South Side RW from Hyde Park - Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn. Once elected, Obama is supported by bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reforms, and promoted increased subsidies for children. In 2001, as co - chairman of the bipartisan supported by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules,
In July 2004, Obama wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. After explaining to the mother grandfather of experience as a veteran of World War II and the benefits of the New Deal of the FHA and GI Bill programs, Obama spoke about changing the U.S. government's economic and social priorities. He questioned the Bush administration's management of the Iraq War and highlighted America from liability for the soldiers. Drawing examples from U.S. history, he criticized the partisan views of the electorate and the U.S. to seek unity in diversity, and said, " There is no liberal America and a conservative America ; existing United States. " Although it was not televised by the three major broadcast news networks, a combined 9.1 million viewers watching on PBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and C - SPAN saw Obama 's speech, which is the highlight of the convention and confirmed his status as an intelligent Democrat new star.
Is expected to be Obama 's opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, out of the race in June 2004. Two months later, and less than three months before Election Day, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party of nomination to replace Ryan. In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70 % of the vote to Keyes 's 27 %, one of the biggest victories for the state of race in Illinois history.
Obama took the oath as a senator on January 4, 2005. Obama is Senatot fifth African-American in the history of the United States, and the third to have been popularly ( see Seventeenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ). In 2008, she was ranked congress eleventh most powerful as a Senator.
Legislation
Obama also sponsored legislation that would be required nuclear plant owners to notify state and local authorities of radioactive leaks, but the bill failed to pass in the full Senate after a heavily modified in committee. [ 80 ] Obama is not hostile to Tort reform and voted for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which grants immunity from civil liability to telecommunications companies complicit with NSA warrantless surgery dr voice calls.
On February 10, 2007, Obama announced the nomination himself for President of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois. During the campaign, Obama emphasized the issues of rapidly ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence, and providing universal health care.
After a few initial contests, the field narrowed to a contest between Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, with each winning some states and the race remaining close throughout the primary process. On May 31, the Democratic National Committee agreed to seat all guests disputed Michigan and Florida at the national convention, each with a half-vote, narrowing Obama 's delegate lead. [ 111 ] On June 3, with all states counted, Obama passed the threshold into allegations that candidate. [ 112 ] [ 113 ] Later that day, he gave a victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota. Clinton suspended her campaign and supported him on June 7. [ 114 ] Instead of that, he campaigned for the general election race against Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate.
On 23 August 2008, Obama was elected as Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate.
At the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, a former Obama rival Hillary Clinton in a speech supporting Obama from the nomination and then calling Obama will be nominated by acclamation as the Democratic presidential candidate. On August 28, Obama delivered a speech to 84,000 supporters in Denver. During the speech, which has been seen by over 38 million people around the world, he received a nomination from the party and policy goals are presented.
After McCain was nominated as the Republican presidential candidate, three presidential debates between Obama and McCain in September and October 2008. In November, Obama won the presidency with 53 % of the popular vote and the electoral college margin range. His election sparked celebrations in various cities in the United States and abroad. Then President - elect Obama then met with President George W. Bush in the Oval Office, 10 November 2008.
On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the general election with 365 votes to McCain's election and became the first American president of African descent. In his victory speech, delivered before a crowd of hundreds of thousands of supporters in Chicago 's Grant Park, Obama proclaimed that " change has come to America. "
On January 8, 2009, the joint session of the U.S. Congress met to explain that assessed from the Electoral College for the 2008 presidential election. Based on calculations of electoral votes, Barack Obama has been declared the winner of presidential elections in the United States and Joseph Biden was declared the chosen representative of the President of the United States.
