Barack Obama

Born in Hawaii in 1961, Barack Obama was elected to his first term in office in 2008. He served eight years in the White House, with his wife and two daughters. As the first black president of the United States, he also won the Nobel Peace Prize and a Profile in Courage Award. Early Life

Obama is the only U.S. president that was born outside the contiguous 48 states. His mother is Ann Durham, a Kansas native who lived in Hawaii, and his father is Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan who was attending college in Hawaii when he met Durham. The Obamas divorced in 1964 and Durham remarried an Indonesian man, meaning the younger Obama spent some of his childhood in Indonesia, where he learned to speak the language fluently. Education

In 1971, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. There, he attended the Punahou School, a private college prep school, on scholarship. After graduation, he attended Occidental College before transferring and graduating from Columbia University. After a few years in the workforce, where he was a writer, researcher and community organizer, Obama entered Harvard Law School, where he served as editor and then president of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated in 1991 and returned to Chicago, where he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.

The 44th President of the United States Born: 1961 Served: 2009 to 2017

Personal Life

Obama met Michelle Robinson in 1989 while both were at the law firm of Sidley Austin. The couple married in 1992 and had daughter Malia in 1998 and Sasha in 2001. Obama is an avid sports fan and basketball player. Political Life

Obama’s first political office was election to the Illinois state Senate in 1997, where he represented parts of Chicago’s South Side. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, where he supported transparency in federal spending, relief for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, de-escalation of the Iraq War, and sanctions on Iran. Obama chaired the Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs and held seats on several Senate Committees, including Foreign Relations. Presidency

Obama became the first black president of the United States in 2009, with Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his vice president. Obama and Biden held office for two four-year terms.

During his time in office, he appointed two women as Supreme Court justices; pushed reforms for LGBT rights, such as signing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act military sexual orientation policy; pushed for increased conservation of public lands and more strict regulation of carbon emissions; and advocated for and eventually passed health care reform. Post Presidency

After the Obama family left the White House in 2017. A survey of historians by the American Political Science Association in 2018 ranked Obama the 8th greatest American president. Unlike other presidential libraries, The Obama Presidential Center will be a privately funded and operated facility without a traditional presidential library. Groundbreaking on the center took place in September 2021 at Jackson Park in Chicago.