Barack Husein Obama

Events
Significant to the
Life of Barack Obama


1863 President Abraham Lincoln signs the Emancipation
Proclamation. Barack often associates himself with President
Lincoln. When he announced his candidacy for the
2008 election, he spoke in front of the Old State Capitol
Building in Springfield, Illinois, where Lincoln famously
declared, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
1895 Barack’s paternal grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, is
born in Kenya.
1920 August 18—The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
is ratified, giving women the right to vote.
1929 January 15—Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. is born.
1936 Barack’s father, Barack Obama Sr., is born in Kenya.
1940–1945 During World War II, Barack’s paternal grandfather, Hussein
Onyango Obama, serves as a cook to a British captain.
Stanley “Gramps” Dunham, Barack’s maternal grandfather,
and Madelyn “Toots” Dunham elope just prior to
the attacks at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Stanley
enlists in the army soon after the attacks, and Madelyn
works on a bomber plane assembly line.
Barack’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham (known as Ann),
is born in 1942, while her father, Stanley, is posted at an
army base.
1946 August 19—President William Clinton is born.
1947 October 26—Senator Hillary Clinton is born.
1953 June 10—Senator John Edwards is born.

Family History

What’s interesting is how deeply American I feel, considering this
exotic background. Some of it is the Midwestern roots of my grandparents,
my mother, and the values that they reflect. But some of it is
also a deep abiding sense that what is quintessentially American, is all
these different threads coming together to make a single quilt. And I
feel very much like I’m one of those threads that belong in this quilt,
that I’m a product of all these different forces, black, white, Asian, Hispanic,
Native American. That, somehow, all this amalgam is part of
who I am, and that’s part of the reason I love this country so much.1
Hussein Onyango Obama, Barack
Obama’s Paternal Grandfather;
Akuma Obama, Barack Obama’s
Paternal Grandmother; Granny,
Hussein Onyango Obama’s Th ird Wife
In 1988, before moving to Boston to attend Harvard Law School, Barack
made an important trip to Kenya. He felt he needed a break from his two
and a half years as a community organizer in Chicago; and, as he later
answered his half brother Bernard when asked why he had finally come
home, he said that he wasn’t sure why, but something had told him it was
time. What he found in Africa was more than just a simple connection
to family. Rather, it was a pilgrimage for this young man who grew up
conflicted by his mixed race and by his father’s absence that came so early
in his life.
Formative Years in Hawaii
and Indonesia


I was raised as an Indonesian child and a Hawaiian child and as a
black child and as a white child. And so what I benefit from is a multiplicity
of cultures that all fed me.
—Barack Obama
In 1959, just after her high school graduation, Ann Dunham moved with
her parents to Honolulu, Hawaii. Her father, Stanley, had been offered
a job at a new furniture store, and her mother, Madelyn, began working
at a local bank. Ann, a shy, extremely bright 18-year-old, enrolled in the
University of Hawaii. In one of her classes, Ann met a 23-year-old man
named Barack Obama, the first African student accepted to the university.
Studying econometrics, Barack was an intense scholar; he was also
quite gregarious and had formed many friendships throughout the university
community. Ann and Barack fell in love and were married, despite
the misgivings of Barack’s father, who wrote from Kenya that he didn’t
approve of the marriage. Barack’s father threatened to have his son’s visa
revoked, which would have required his immediate return to Kenya. He
didn’t know the marriage had taken place until a few years later.
Ann’s parents were wary at first but soon accepted their son-in-law.
His charm, his intelligence, and the couple’s obvious love impressed them.
On August 4, 1961, Ann and Barack had a son they named Barack Hussein
Obama—Barack after his father and Hussein after his grandfather.
The son, born to a white American woman and a black African man,
was called Barry.
In 1963, Barack Sr. was awarded a scholarship to study
at Harvard University for a Ph.D. Although the scholarship money was

College and Community
Ac tivism in Chicago


Occidental Co llege
In the fall of 1979, as Barack left Hawaii to attend Occidental College
in Los Angeles, Jimmy Carter was president, a first-class stamp cost 15
cents, and the average retail price of gasoline was 88 cents per gallon. In
November, Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and held
63 Americans hostage for 444 days. For Barack, his new home didn’t
look, at least on the outside, much different from his home in Hawaii. It
was sunny, there were palm trees, and the Pacific Ocean was nearby. On
campus, the other students were friendly and the college instructors were
encouraging;
there were enough black students to form friendships—a
sort of tribe where issues such as race and common concerns were discussed.
However, he also found that many of his black friends in Los
Angeles weren’t necessarily concerned with the same complaints as his
black friends in Hawaii. Most had the same concerns of white students:
continuing with classes and finding a good job after graduation. Barack
continued to search for an identity and struggle with his mixed race.
In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Barack wrote that growing up
in Hawaii instead of the more difficult streets and neighborhoods where
many of his friends had lived might have left him without the same feeling
of needing to “escape.” For him, there was nothing he had to escape
except his own inner doubts. He felt more like the black students who had
grown up in the safer environment of the suburbs; their parents had already
escaped from more difficult circumstances. They, he wrote, weren’t
defined by their color; they were individuals, refusing to be categorized.

A Trip to Kenya and
Harvard Law School



Leaving the Developing
Communities Project, Ac tivism,
and the South Side of Chicago


Barack received his acceptance to Harvard Law School in February 1988.
He announced to his coworkers, volunteers, and church ministers that he
would be leaving in May and moving to Boston in the fall. Months before,
he had told Johnnie, the man he’d hired away from a downtown Chicago
civic group, of his decision. Johnnie, Barack knew, would carry on the
work of the organization. Hiring him had lightened Barack’s workload
and had allowed him to believe that their hard work was making real differences
for the people living on Chicago’s South Side. Johnnie’s response
to Barack’s leaving was more than positive. He told Barack that he knew
it was just a matter of time before he left the Developing Communities
Project, and he knew Barack had many options. He said that the choice
between Harvard and the South Side wasn’t any choice at all, adding that
he and the community leaders would be proud to see him succeed.1 Barack
appreciated Johnnie’s support and confidence, and it made the decision
to leave easier. Barack realized he needed a break from the work of community
activism, and he wanted to visit Kenya. His half sister Auma had
returned to Nairobi from Germany and was teaching at a university. Having
Auma in Kenya and having time before moving to Boston, it was the
right time for an extended visit to his father’s homeland.
The plan to attend law school came out of knowing how much he could
learn. He wanted to gain knowledge of interest rates, corporate mergers,

Teaching Constitutional
Law, Marriage, Family, and
Illinois St ate Politics



There are times when I want to do everything and be everything. I
want to have time to read and swim with the kids and not disappoint
my voters and do a really careful job on each and every thing that I
do. And that can sometimes get me into trouble. That’s historically
been one of my bigger faults. I mean, I was trying to organize Project
Vote at the same time as I was writing a book, and there are only so
many hours in a day.
—Barack Obama
In 1991, Barack graduated from Harvard Law School. Because of his position
with the Law Review and graduating magna cum laude, he was heavily
recruited by numerous law firms and also by a chief judge of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., circuit, a very powerful and
prestigious position. Judd Miner, a partner in a firm specializing in civil
rights cases, read about Barack in a Chicago publication and decided to
give him a call at the Law Review. Miner was told that Barack was unavailable
and was asked if he was making a recruiting call. When Miner
said that he was, he was told he would be put on a list and that he was
number 643.1 Despite being heavily recruited, Barack was determined to
return to the South Side of Chicago. One of his motivations in attending
law school had been to gain knowledge that would make him a more
effective leader. With his law degree and working in civil rights, as well
as continuing to be a community organizer and representing victims of
housing and employment discrimination, he believed he could effect real
changes. He also wanted to be part of a community and put down roots in

The Senator from the
State of Illinois


Barack writes in his memoir The Audacity of Hope that his campaign for
the Senate was indicative of some of the changes that have taken place
in white and black communities over the past 25 years. Illinois, he writes,
already had a history of blacks elected to statewide office and had also
elected another black senator, Carol Moseley Braun, and, thus, his campaign
wasn’t a novelty. Barack writes that his race didn’t preclude the
possibility of his win, nor was his election aided by the evolving racial
attitudes of Illinois’s white voters. His senatorial race, he concludes, also
reflected the changes in black communities.1
However, in Barack Obama, there was always something different and
exciting; for many voters, Barack meant a change, a breath of fresh air,
and a new possibility. It didn’t matter to Illinois voters that Barack was a
black man with an unusual heritage: son of a white woman and a black
African man. Barack was an orator, a teacher, a legislator, and many gravitated
to him, believing in what he had to say. To many, he signaled something
new, and that was enough for them. The new U.S. senator from the
state of Illinois was a celebrity almost overnight.
In the Democratic primary, Barack had two formidable opponents.
One was a multimillionaire who used his own cash for the race; the other
was a well-known state official. As a result, Barack was expected to lose.
Instead, he won the election by an overwhelming margin. In the general
election, his margin of victory was 70 percent to 27 percent—once again,
an enormous victory and, for many involved in Illinois state politics, a
rather surprising margin. Along with these margins, and in a race that purposely
had been a clean, no-negative-advertising race with consistently

Best-Selling Author,
Michelle Obama , and
Another Trip to Africa


By the time Barack was elected to the U.S. Senate, the financial aspects
of his life were set; part of this financial security came from being a bestselling
author. Four years after graduating from law school, he published
his first book, a memoir entitled Dreams from My Father, A Story of Race
and Inheritance. That book, written while running Project Vote in Illinois,
didn’t initially sell well. But after his momentous speech at the Democratic
National Convention and his resulting sudden fame, 85,000 new
copies of the book were sent to bookstores, and it began a climb to the top
of the bestseller list.
When Barack was elected to the prestigious post of president of the
Harvard
Law Review, he was the first black student to hold the position.
This gave him certain celebrity. There were stories in the New York Times
and in Time magazine. There were calls for interviews and requests for him
to appear at conferences. And, not unusual to someone with newfound
fame and notoriety, there were calls from publishers and literary agents.
What was published four years after his graduation from Harvard Law was
one of many memoirs published at the time; Barack’s, however, was somewhat
different. According to a February 2007 article in the Weekly Standard,
author Andrew Ferguson notes that, at the time, there were many
writers penning detailed accounts of their lives. By 1995, when Dreams
from My Father was published, the author notes that bookshelves were
filled with memoirs, some virtually unreadable, others good. Of the many
memoirs, Barack’s first book was considered better than most. But it wasn’t
the book he intended to write. According to Ferguson, Barack intended
to write a book examining U.S. race relations and civil rights litigation,

Obamamania, an
Exploratory Committee ,
and the Announce ment



This is a profoundly personal decision that I’m going through. I’m
looking at the external factors: money, organization, calendar, all
those things. But the most important thing I’m looking at is, Do I
have something unique to bring to a presidential race that would justify
putting my family through what I think everybody understands
is a grueling process?
—Barack Obama, Chicago Tribune, November 20, 2006
I never had doubt about what Barack could offer, and that’s what
kind of spiraled me out of my own doubt. I don’t want to be the person
that holds back a potential answer to the nation’s challenges.
—Michelle Obama, USA Today, May 11, 2007
Barack’s Stand on the Issues
Barack’s voting record was considered to be one of the most liberal in the
Senate, but he appealed to many Republicans because he spoke about
liberal issues and goals, but did it using more conservative language. His
stand on the issues typically matched that of the Democratic Party platform,
although Barack was known to be conciliatory and was always determined
to reach across the political aisle for compromise, to move forward,
and do what he believed was best for the American people.
According to his senatorial Web site (http://obama.senate.gov) in
December 2007, Barack’s stand on issues was as follows: On tax reform,

The Campaign for
the Presidency


I like to believe that we can have a leader whose family name is not
Bush or Clinton. I like what Obama had to say.
—53-year-old retired software engineer after hearing Barack speak in
New Hampshire1
I think that there’s the possibility—not the certainty, but the possibility—
that I can’t just win an election but can also transform the
country in the process, that the language and the approach I take to
politics is sufficiently different that I could bring diverse parts of this
country together in a way that hasn’t been done in some time, and
that bridging those divisions is a critical element in solving problems
like health care or energy or education . . .
—Barack Obama2
The 2008 presidential race has been described as unprecedented and as
a history-making event. For the first time, an African American was a
Democratic front-runner with a legitimate opportunity to be the president.
Senator Hillary Clinton was also a front-runner, another first in
U.S. presidential politics. There were also other firsts in this historymaking
race for president: the first Mormon, the first Hispanic, the first
person to have been married three times, and a person over 70 years of age
could be elected president. After 218 years of U.S. history and 42 presidents,
all white men, the field in the 2008 election included candidates
whose race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or personal history likely would
have, in the past, ruled them out from running for president. The candidates
in 2008 reflected broad trends in American life that also were affect

The Campaign Continues


He has staked his candidacy on union—on bringing together two
halves of America that are profoundly divided, and by associating
himself with Lincoln—and he knows what both of those things
mean.
—Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker, 20071
In May 2007, Time magazine selected Barack as one of the world’s most
influential people. The magazine’s columnist, Joe Klein, wrote Barack has
“attached himself to the notion of audacity” and that it is certainly audacious
for a senator with two years of service, of mixed-race parentage,
and with Hussein as his middle name to run for president of the United
States; and it is certainly audacious for him to challenge one of the Democratic
Party’s best-known and best-financed politicians, Senator Hillary
Clinton. Klein said Barack’s candidacy, his standing in state and national
polls, and the amount of money he has raised to finance his campaign has
been audacious, too.2
Although Barack may be bold and audacious, he’s described as “cool”
and informal, smooth and stylish. His rhetoric can be fiery, convincing,
and, to many, very compelling. When he gives a speech on foreign policy,
he often talks about alliances and how altruism must be a part of U.S. domestic
and foreign policy. In a time when there are deep divisions among
the American people and in Congress, Barack seeks consensus, using dialogue
and negotiation to mend fences and bring people together. In the
Senate, Barack’s voting record is considered to be one of the most liberal,
but he has often appealed to Republicans because he speaks about liberal
issues and goals by using conservative language.

Epilogue


He speaks of things that touch the heart of everyday people. We all
collectively as a society have to hold onto our hope together. How
else are going to make it if we don’t join together to create a better
society for everyone?
—A teacher in North Charleston, South Carolina, referring to Barack
Obama after seeing him at a rally before the South Carolina primary1
Something was stirring in American politics, something akin to a growing
movement not seen in recent history. It was a movement that meant
getting involved by answering phones, knocking on doors, wearing candidate
buttons and T-shirts, and attaching stickers to car bumpers. It was
a movement that included standing outside for hours in the searing heat,
blowing snow, drenching rain, and frigid cold to hear candidates speak in
venues so crowded that the overflow had to stand outside or in adjacent
rooms. It was a movement where it was not enough to attend caucuses
and vote in primaries, but it was also necessary to speak up and encourage
neighbors to do the same. It meant being present and voting. It was
a steadily rising movement, gaining a momentum that surprised pollsters,
the media, and supporters and encouraged people who never cared about
voting before. One impetus behind this growing movement clearly was a
phenomenon known as Barack Obama.
To add even more to a unique and certainly historic presidential campaign,
it was the young people in states across the country who were engaged,
volunteering, and voting. For many of them, it was for the very first
time. The February 11, 2008, issue of Time magazine devoted a cover story