Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (pronounced /bЙ™Ð›?rЙ'ЛÑ'k hКЉЛ?seЙЄn oКЉЛ?bЙ'ЛÑ'mЙ™/; born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential election. He is the first African American to be the presumptive presidential nominee of any major American political party.

A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, served as a law school professor, and also worked as a political activist and lawyer before serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After winning a landslide primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote.

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he cosponsored legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In the current 110th Congress, he has sponsored legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel. Since announcing his presidential campaign in February 2007, Obama has emphasized ending the war in Iraq, increasing energy independence, decreasing the influence of lobbyists, and providing universal health care as top national priorities.

Early life and career

Main article: Early life and career of Barack Obama

Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at the Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr., of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, of Wichita, Kansas, who was largely descended from pre-revolutionary British settlers to the United States, although her great-great-grandfather Falmouth Kearney emigrated from Ireland in the mid 19th century.[1][2] His parents met while both were attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student.[3] They separated when he was two years old and later divorced.[4] After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old.[2] He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979.[5]

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years.[6] He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations.[7] Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked at Business International Corporation and New York Public Interest Research Group.[8][9]

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side.[8][10] During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens.[11] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.[12] In summer 1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks then Kenya for five weeks where he met many of his Kenyan relatives for the first time.[13]

He entered Harvard Law School in 1988.[14] His election in 1990 as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review was widely reported.[15] Obama graduated with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, then returned to Chicago and began writing his first book, Dreams from My Father, a memoir published in 1995.[16]

Obama directed Illinois Project Vote! from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive with a staff of 10 and 700 volunteers that achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.[17][18]

Obama worked as an associate attorney with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland from 1993 to 2002. After 1996, he worked at the firm only during the summer, when the Illinois Senate was not in session.[19] Obama worked on cases where the firm represented community organizers, pursued discrimination claims, and on voting rights cases. He also spent time on real estate transactions, filing incorporation papers and defending clients against minor lawsuits.[20] Mostly he drew up briefs, contracts, and other legal documents as a junior associate on legal teams.[20] Obama served part-time as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.[21][22]

Obama was a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in spring 1993.[8][23] He served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund Obama's DCP, from 1993вЂ"2002, and served on the board of directors of The Joyce Foundation from 1994вЂ"2002.[8]Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995вЂ"2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995вЂ"1999.[8] He also served on the board of directors of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center.[8]

State legislature

Main article: Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from the 13th District, which then spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park-Kenwood south to South