Barack Obama's Family Background

Barack Obama's Family Background

Barack Hussein Obama II was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4th 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in Kenya; and his mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in a Wichita, Kansas. Obama’s parents separated when he was two and his father returned to Kenya. His Mother remarried to Lolo Soetoro, and they moved to Jakarta in 1967 where his half sister Maya was born. When he was ten he moved back to Hawaii and was raised by his grandparents. He went to college in New York, and graduated from Columbia University in 1983. After college, Obama put law school aside and moved to Chicago in 1985 to become an organizer for a religious group seeking to improve living conditions for poor neighborhoods. Here he met his wife Michelle and they were married in 1988. He then went to Harvard to get his law degree in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Afterwards he moved back to Chicago to be a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. This led him to run for the Illinois state Senate in 1996 and the US Senate in 2004. He became the third African-American since reconstruction to be elected into the U.S. Senate. His wife Michelle and he had two daughters, Malia, born 1998, and Sasha, born 2001. In February 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. His opponent was former first lady and current U.S. Senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton until he became the official nominee on June 3, 2008.

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