The 44th, and the first African American president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, was born in 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii.
When he was only two, his father left to study at Harvard University, then shortly after, his parents divorced, and Obama didn’t see his father until he was 10, and that was the last time he saw him.
Later, his mother, Dunham, married a foreign student from Indonesia, and had a second child, Maya. At that time, Obama lived for several years in Jakarta with his half-sister, mother, and stepfather.
The family returned to Hawaii in the ‘70s. After finishing his studies in political science, Obama worked as a writer and editor for Business International Corp. in Manhattan.
In 1991, he graduated from Harvard University’s law school, where he was the first African American to be president of the Harvard Law Review. During his studies, Obama met Michelle Robinson, and the two married in 1992.
They moved to Chicago and Obama became active in the Democratic Party. He directed Project Vote in Chicago, which helped add thousands of African American voters and helped with the Democratic victories in 1992.
During this period, Obama wrote and published his first book, the memoir Dreams from My Father. He also lectured at the University of Chicago and worked as an attorney on civil rights issues.
In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois Senate, and later in 2004, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Two years after Obama’s trip to Kenya gained media attention. This attention was followed by the success of his second book, The Audacity of Hope, which became a bestseller in no time.
On November 4, 2008, Obama became the first African-American to be elected President with nearly 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes.
For much of his first term, Obama focused on economic recovery and health care. One of the first acts Obama signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, stating that each discriminatory paycheck resets the 180-day limit to file a pay discrimination lawsuit.
In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law to expand insurance access, protect consumers, and lower costs, the same year, Obama repealed the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy enacted by William J. Clinton administration in 1994. As a result of these efforts, Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
When he accepted the Prize in December, he said, “Evil does exist in the world” and “there will be times when nations, acting individually or in concert, will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”
Obama’s presidency ended on January 20, 2017. He continued to support the Democratic Party in his post-presidential career by campaigning for candidates in the 2018 midterm elections, endorsing voting rights legislation in Congress, and calling for statehood for Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.
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