Page 2 - Presidential Profiles

?C The Sentinel-Record, Monday, Month 00, 2008
The Sentinel-Record, Sunday, February 16, 2020
Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas
Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas
PRESIDENTIALPROFILES | OBAMA
BARACK OBAMA 44th President and First Black President
Born in Hawaii in 1961, Barack Obama was elected to his first term in office in 2008. He served eight years in the White House, with his wife, Michelle, and two daughters, Malia and Sasha. As the first black president of the United States, he also won the Nobel Peace Prize and a Profile in Courage Award.
EARLY LIFE
Obama is the only U.S. president that was born outside the contiguous 48 states. His mother is Ann Durham, a Kansas native who lived in Hawaii, and his father is Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan who was attending college in Hawaii when he met Durham. The Obamas divorced in 1964 and Durham remarried an Indonesian man, mean- ing the younger Obama spent some of his childhood in Indonesia, where he learned to speak the language fluently.
EDUCATION
In 1971, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. There, he attended the Punahou School, a private college prep school, on scholarship. After graduation, he attended Occidental College before transferring and graduating from Columbia University. After a few years in the workforce, where he was a writ- er, researcher and community organiz- er, Obama entered Harvard Law School, where he served as editor and then president of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated in 1991 and returned to Chicago, where he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.
PERSONAL LIFE
Obama met Michelle Robinson in
PETE SOUZA/OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
1989 while both were at the law firm of Sidley Austin. The couple married in 1992 and had daughter Malia in 1998 and Sasha in 2001. Obama is an avid sports fan and basketball player.
POLITICAL LIFE
Obama’s first political office was election to the Illinois state Senate in 1997, where he represented parts of Chicago’s South Side. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, where he sup- ported transparency in federal spend- ing, relief for the Democratic Republic
of the Congo, de-escalation of the Iraq War, and sanctions on Iran. Obama chaired the Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs and held seats on several Senate Committees, including Foreign Relations.
PRESIDENCY
Obama became the first black presi- dent of the United States in 2009, with Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his vice president. Obama and Biden held office for two four-year terms.
During his time in office, he appointed two women as Supreme Court justices; pushed reforms for LGBT rights, such as signing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and repealing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act military sexual orientation policy; pushed for increased conservation of public lands and more strict regulation of carbon emissions; and advocated for and eventually passed health care reform.
POST PRESIDENCY
After the Obama family left the White House in 2017. A survey of histo- rians by the American Political Science Association in 2018 ranked Obama the 8th greatest American president. His presidential library will be built in Chicago’s Jackson Park.