A PERSONAL NOTE ON LIFE OF BARACK OBAMA
Barack Obama was born to a black father, named Barack of Kenya and white mother Stanley Ann Dunham in august 4,1961.His father grew up herding goat in Kenya. Stanley Ann Dunham was the white daughter of Kansas bred parents. His parents marriage didn’t last long, his father would be absent for a whole month except for a day.
His mother, a free spirited anthropologist passionate about helping women raised Barack Obama. His mother remarried and brought her son to a third world country, Indonenesia. There he saw poverty and disease and his eyes were opened to new world.
He did his high schooling Honolulu high school. At that time he lived with his maternal grand parents, including Madelyn Dunham. Dunham died at the age of 86.His father died in a car accident and his mother succumbed to ovarian cancer in 1995.His half sister Maya soetoro-Ng lives in Honolulu and teaches history.
At age of 28, a second year student with a political science degree from Columbia university spend several years working the streets of Chicago mobilizing south side resident to fight for themselves after steel mill closings left them struggling.
He began his career as community organiser. By 1990 he was transformed into a celebrity politician after he was elected the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. After Harvard, Mr. Obama rejected high-powered job offers, joining a small civil rights firm in Chicago. He ran a voter registration drive and lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago law school. He married Michelle Robinson, a fellow Harvard law school grad who served as his adviser during a summer internship at a Chicago law firm. The couple had two daughters malia and Sasha.
The jump into politics came in 1996, when Mr. Obama won Illinois senate seat representing Hyde Park, the south side neighbourhood that covers the prestigious university as well as pockets of deep inner-city poverty.
Mr. obama helped change laws governing the death penalty, ethics, and racial profiling, and he won tax credits for the working poor. But he failed in his campaign for Universal health care. He failed, too, in a 2000 bid for a U.S. House senate.
He then had golden opportunity to run for U.S. Senate in 2004 - and to introduce himself to his fellow Americans. He won the election, becoming the only third black U.S. Senator since reconstruction.
On blustery February day of 2007, Mr. Obama returned to Illinois to the steps of the old capitol to announce his candidacy for presidency. There after he has drawn colossal crowds whenever he made public appearance.
On January 20, 47-year old Barack Obama will take to another stage, the west front of the U.S. Capitol to recite the oath of the nation’s highest office, a new chapter in American history.