Barack Obama - Biography

Barack Obama - 44th president of the USA

The 44th president and the first African-American president of the USA, Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother was a white American, Ann Dunham from Wichita, Kansas, and his father Barack Obama Sr is a black Kenyan.

Barack's mom and dad were college students at the University of Hawaii, when they met first. Unfortunately their marriage did not last long and got divorced in 1964, when Barack was 3 years old.



At the age of 6, Obama moved to Jakarta with his mother when she remarried an Indonesian oil manager named Lolo Soetoro. Barack's sister Maya was born in 1970 while he was in Indonesia. Later in 1971, he returned back to Hawaii and brought up by his grandfather, who served in Patton's army and his grandmother who worked at a local bank. That year his dad visited him-sadly this was the last time he saw his father.
Growing up Barack enjoyed spending time on the beach, fishing and body surfing. Barack is also very good at playing basketball. He loved to play basketball as a kid, even still now he loves to play basketball whenever he can. 
Though his family didn't have much more money to pay his school, he went an expensive private school. His family felt that most important thing is to educate him. So they worked hard to pay the school fees. During the school years he was a bright student.

College Years

In 1979, after graduating from high school, Barack went to Occidental College in Los Angeles. Two years later, he transferred to Columbia University in New York where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in political science in the year 1983. A year back, his dad tragically died in a car accident in Kenya. 

In 1985, Barack moved to Chicago where he served as a community organizer, helping people improve their lives and become voters. In 1987, he made his first trip to Kenya. During the trip he visited his dad's village and met many of his relatives first time.
After returning from the trip, he enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he was elected as first African -American president of the Harvard Law Review which was a popular magazine about law, edited by Harvard Law students. In 1991 he graduated from there with a degree in law.

Barack's family 

Political life

Barack moved Chicago and married Michelle Robinson, an attorney in 1992. They have two Daughters – Malia and Sasha. From 1992 until 2004, Barack worked as a Constitutional law tutor at the University of Chicago. Sadly, his mother died of cancer in 1995.

Barack was elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, 1998 and 2002. In 2000, he lost a primary election for congress But this didn't stop him. In the year 2004, he was elected as a Democrat from the state of Illinois to the US Senate. 

On November 4, 2008, after a long and historic campaign Obama won the presidential election of the USA as a presidential candidate of a major political party, the Democrats, defeating the candidate from opposition party, the republican, John McCain. His presidential inauguration was on January 20, 2009.

In April 2011, Obama announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012 presidential election. On 6th of November 2012, he was re-elected for a second term as the US president defeating opposite Republican nominee, Mitt Romney and became the first candidate from Democrats,elected for a second term as US president after the Second World War.