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Barack Obama
U.S. Senator (D-Illinois)
Born:
Aug. 4, 1961
Birthplace:
Honolulu, Hawaii
Barack Obama made history in June 2008, when he became the first
African American to head a major party ticket in a presidential election.
He edged out Sen. Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic
presidential nomination after a long and often bitter primary season. He
ran as the candidate of change and made hope the center of his campaign.
He's to face Sen. John McCain in the general election. Obama's platform
has focused on advocating for working families and poor communities,
education, caring for the environment, and ethics reform.
Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961 to an American mother and a Kenyan
father. When he was two, his parents, who had met as students at the
University of Hawaii, divorced. Obama's Harvard-educated father then
returned to Kenya, where he worked in the economics ministry. Obama lived
in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather for part of his childhood,
returning to Hawaii to finish high school. He graduated from Columbia
University, where he majored in political science and specialized in
international relations. He then attended Harvard Law School, graduated
magna cum laude, and served as the first African-American president of the
Harvard Law Review. After law school, he worked as a community organizer
and a civil rights lawyer in Chicago. He also taught at the University of
Chicago Law School as a senior lecturer specializing in constitutional
law. Obama represented the South Side of Chicago in the Illinois State
Senate from 1996–2004 as a Democrat. In 2004, he was elected to the
U.S. Senate, winning with 70% of the vote against the conservative black
Republican, Alan Keyes. Obama became the only African-American serving in
the U.S. Senate (and the fifth in U.S. history). Obama's idealism,
commitment to civil rights, and telegenic good looks generated enormous
media attention for his Senate campaign. The eloquence of his keynote
address at the 2004 Democratic Nation Convention in Boston, Mass.,
confirmed his status as one of the Democratic party's freshest and most
inspirational new leaders.
Obama published an autobiography, Dreams From My Father, in
1995; it became a best-seller during his 2004 Senate campaign. His next
autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, became a bestseller
after its Oct. 2006 publication, and won both the Black Caucus of the
American Library Association Literary Awards and the NAACP Image Awards in
2007. He is married to Michelle Obama, a Chicago native who also graduated
from Harvard Law School. They have two daughters: Malia Ann and Sasha.
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson
Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
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