Early Life and Education

Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents, Barack Obama Sr. from Kenya and Ann Dunham from Kansas, separated shortly after his birth and divorced two years later. In 1965, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian student at the University of Hawaii. The following year, the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, was born in 1970.

Worried about the quality of education and safety in Jakarta, Dunham sent a ten-year-old Obama back to Hawaii, where he lived with his maternal grandparents. He later attended the prestigious Punahou School, excelling in both academics and basketball. As one of the few Black students at the school, Obama developed an early awareness of racial identity and social equity. He graduated in 1979.

Obama began his undergraduate studies at Occidental College in Los Angeles. After two years, he transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he earned a degree in political science in 1983. He later attended Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude in 1991. At Harvard, he made history by becoming the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review.

Community Organizing and Political Rise

Following his graduation from Columbia, Obama worked in the private sector for several years. In 1985, he moved to Chicago, where he worked as a community organizer on the South Side, focusing on improving living conditions for low-income residents in neighborhoods like Roseland and Altgeld Gardens. This experience laid the foundation for his future in politics and public service.

Obama entered politics in 1996 when he was elected to the Illinois State Senate. His political reputation grew rapidly, and in 2004, he was elected to the U.S. Senate representing Illinois. That same year, he gained national attention after delivering the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention.