Barack Obama Biography

 The following biography was published in the 'Obama Blog' in a November 17, 2007 report.

Barack Obama was born on Aug. 4, 1961 to Barack Hussein Obama of Kenya and Ann Dunham of Kansas. His parents met in Hawai'i and divorced when Barack was still young. Barack's father was from the Luo people of Kenya coming as a scholar to study in the United States. His mother was also an intellectual, an anthropologist by training.

His mother remarried to Indonesian Lolo Soetoro and the family moved to Indonesia when Barack was six years old. He has one sister, Maya, the daughter of Lolo and Ann. At the age of 10, Barack returned to live with his grandparents in Hawai'i.

He became a student at the prestigious Punahou School in Honolulu and after graduating studied at Occidental College in California before transferring to Columbia University in New York. He graduated with a B.A. in political science and specialization in international relations.

After working a short while with a corporation, Barack decided to follow his calling and took a low-paying job as a community organizer in Chicago, a city he had never lived in before.

After working a few years at community organizing, he entered Harvard Law School in 1988. Obama has stated that he believed that in order to effect real change, someone had to work at the political level. He became the first African American president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review and completed his J.D. degree with magna cum laude honors in 1991.

Rather than accept corporate job offers, Obama became a civil rights lawyer with Miner, Barnhill & Galland from 1993 to 1996. In 1996, he was elected to the Illinois State Senate. He also was a lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1994 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

In the Illinois State Senate, Barack worked on ethics and health care reform, and sponsored legislation improving tax credits for low-income workers. He negotiated welfare reform, and better subsidies for child care. Obama also played the key role in legislation requiring videotaping of homicide interrogations, and a law to monitor racial profiling.

In 2004, during his bid for the U.S. Senate, Obama gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention.

As a U.S. Senator, Obama is a Veteran Affairs Committee member. He has championed legislation on redeployment of troops out of Iraq, increased government accountability, veteran's benefits and care, nuclear non-proliferation, energy independence and global warming action.

In 2007, Barack Obama announced his candidacy for President of the United States. He has mounted an impressive grassroots campaign up to Nov. 2007.

He married his wife Michelle in 1992 and has two daughters, Malia and Sasha. In 2004, he published an autobiography, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. His second book, The Audacity of Hope, was published in 2006.

Barack lives with his family on Chicago's South Side where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ.