Barack Obama Research Paper

A black baby was born in 1961, in Hawaii with a foreign name ‘’Barack Obama’’. At this time black people didn’t have the same rights as white people, there was and still is a lot of racism in America. So how does an African-American who suffered from racism become the most powerful person in America? This essay will show that Obama’s lowly start in life was to spur him on to achieve great things and prove that it is possible to succeed in America today no matter what color or creed you are. Barack Hussein Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother Ann Dunham was American. His father was born into the Luo ethnicity in the Nyanza province in Kenya. Obama’s parents were divorced in March 1964, when he was two years old. …show more content…
A year later, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro Ng was born. Several incidents in Indonesia left Dunham afraid for her son’s safety and education, so at the age of ten Obama was sent back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. His mother and half-sister later joined them. As a child, Obama didn’t have a relationship with his father. While living with his grandparents, Obama enrolled in the esteemed Punahou Academy, he graduated in 1979 with academic honors. As one of only three black students at the school, Obama became conscious of racism and what it meant to be African-American. He later described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage with his own being. Obama also struggled with the absence of his father, who he saw only once more after his parents divorced when Obama Sr visited Hawaii for a short time in 1971. A tragedy struck when Obama Sr died in car crash on November 24, 1982, at this time Obama was 21 years old. He wrote about his father “at the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me both more and less than a man” Obama (B.O).(1995, P xiv) Dreams from my …show more content…
The next year, he joined the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin as a summer associate and Michelle Robinson, a lawyer was assigned to be Obama’s adviser. Not long after, the couple began dating. In February 1990, Obama was elected the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated from Harvard in 1991. After law school, Obama returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer with the firm of Barnhill & Galland. He also taught constitutional law part-time at the university of Chicago Law school between 1992 and 2004 first as a lecturer and then as a professor. He helped organize voter registration drives during Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. In October 1992, he and Michelle were married. They moved to Kenwood, on Chicago’s South Side and welcomed two daughters several years later, Malia born in 1998 and Sasha born in

Show More