Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Hawaii. He would go on to become a Columbia University graduate, a community organizer, president of the Harvard Law Review, an Illinois Senator, and the 44th President of the United States.
Barack Obama was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, where he graduated from high school. He attended Occidental College and Columbia University, earning a degree in political science. After graduating, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer on the city’s South Side. He later attended Harvard Law School where he became the first African American to be president of the Harvard Law Review. It was while he was working as an associate during law school that he met Michelle Robinson, a fellow lawyer, who he would marry in 1992. They have two daughters.
In 1996, Obama became a member of the state senate of Illinois. Four years later, he put in a bid for a seat in the US House of Representatives, which he lost. In 2004, he succeeded in securing a seat in the US Senate representing the state of Illinois. In 2007, Barack Obama announced that he would run for President of the United States. The first African-American president, he was elected to two terms.
Perhaps his most lasting success as president came with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which provided health coverage for millions of uninsured and lowered costs for others. The act also prohibited insurance companies from denying care due to preexisting conditions. Obama also won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”
Learn more here:
- https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/barack-obama/
- https://www.obamalibrary.gov/obamas/president-barack-obama
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Barack-Obama/Taking-heat-and-taking-the-lead
- https://www.julesbuono.com/obamas-reading-list/
Buy President Obama’s most recent memoir from an independent bookstore here: https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=barack+obama
