Date of Birth
Birth Name
Barack Hussein Obama II
Nickname
Barry
Bama
Rock
The One
No Drama Obama
Height
6' 1" (1.85 m)
Mini Biography
Barack Obama was born to a white American mother, Ann Dunham, and a black Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr.,
who were both young college students at the University of Hawaii. When
his father left for Harvard, she and Barack stayed behind, and his
father ultimately returned alone to Kenya, where he worked as a
government economist. Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil
manager and moved to Jakarta when Barack was six. He later recounted
Indonesia as simultaneously lush and a harrowing exposure to tropical
poverty. He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his
grandparents. The family lived in a small apartment - his grandfather
was a furniture salesman and an unsuccessful insurance agent and his
grandmother worked in a bank - but Barack managed to get into Punahou
School, Hawaii's top prep academy. His father wrote to him regularly
but, though he traveled around the world on official business for Kenya,
he visited only once, when Barack was ten.
Obama attended
Columbia University, but found New York's racial tension inescapable. He
became a community organizer for a small Chicago church-based group for
three years, helping poor South Side residents cope with a wave of
plant closings. He then attended Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became
the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He turned
down a prestigious judicial clerkship, choosing instead to practice
civil-rights law back in Chicago, representing victims of housing and
employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He
also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, and married
Michelle Robinson, a fellow attorney. Eventually he was elected to the
Illinois state senate, where his district included both Hyde Park and
some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side.
In 2004 Obama was
elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and he
gained national attention by giving a rousing and well-received keynote
speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2008 he ran
for President, and despite having only four years of national political
experience, he won. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th
President of the United States, and the first African-American ever
elected to that position.
Spouse
Trade Mark
When making informal public visits, often rolls up shirt sleeves and "joins in" on a job site.
Passionate fiercely Idealistic speeches
Distinctive clipped manner of Speaking
Trivia
His first name comes from the word that means "blessed by God" in Arabic.
In the Kenyan town where his father was born, the long-brewed "Senator" brand of beer has been nicknamed "Obama."
U.S. Senator from Illinois since 3 January 2005.
Won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word for the CD version of his autobiography "Dreams From My Father" (2006).
Lives in Hyde Park (Chicago).
Candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 US presidential election.
Several celebrities including; Halle Berry, George Clooney, Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Topher Grace, Macy Gray, Bruce Springsteen, Oprah Winfrey Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Hayden Panettiere, Zachary Quinto, Eddie MurphyJohn Cleese support his 2008 presidential campaign. Robert De Niro gave his endorsement at the same rally where Barack was endorsed by Caroline and Ted Kennedy. and
Enjoys playing basketball and poker.
At his wife's suggestion, he quit smoking before his campaign to win the Democratic nomination began.
His paternal relatives still live in Kenya.
Confessed teenage drug experiences in his memoirs "Dreams from My Father".
One of his ancestors was Mareen Duvall, also an ancestor of actor Robert Duvall.
Shares his surname with a small city in western Japan, which means "small shore" in Japanese.
Plays basketball.
Born to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936-1982) and Ann Dunham (1942-1995), married from 1960 to 1965.
Named one of Time magazine's "100 most influential people in the world" list in 2005 and 2007.
Chosen as one of "10 people would change the world" by New Statesman magazine (2005).
Won his second Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album for "The Audacity of Hope" (2008).
On
June 3, 2008 he won the Montana primary election giving him enough
delegates to become the first Black American presidential candidate to
win a major political party's presumptive nomination for the office of
President of the United States.
Is a die-hard Chicago White Sox fan.
More than 215,000 people attended his speech in Berlin on 24 July 2008.
Has one half-sister, Maya, born to his mother and stepfather in 1970.
Barack
Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham died Sunday November 2, 2008
in the early evening in Honolulu from cancer. She was 86.
Is the first African-American man to be elected President of the United States (November 2008).
When
elected President, he won the battleground states of Florida, Virginia
and Colorado - all of which had voted Republican in 2004.
Is the first American president to be born in Hawaii.
Was the 27th lawyer to be elected American president.
Was elected to be the 44th president of the Unites States of America on 4 November, 2008.
As a child growing up in Hawaii, his classmates knew him as Barry.
Presidential campaign slogan: "Change we can believe in".
Is primarily of Kenyan, Irish, and English ancestry.
First ever US President to address a Muslim community at an inaugural speech.
Shares the same birthday as long-time White House correspondent and journalism legend, Helen Thomas. On her 89th birthday (and his 48th), they celebrated by blowing birthday cupcakes together in front of the press corps.
October 2009, won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Defended his decision not to issue a formal written statement on the death of controversial pop star Michael Jackson on 25 June 2009.
Merited
a position in Time magazine's - The 100 Most Influential People in the
World ("Leaders" category) - with an homage contributed by David Remnick (Issue: May 10, 2010).
Received a gift of a Portuguese water dog from Senator Ted Kennedy
and his wife Victoria. Because the particular breed is reportedly
hypo-allergenic, the First Family and friends were highly unlikely to
suffer any allergic reactions in the pet's presence. [2009]
Obama's appearance on "The View" (1997) (29 July 2010) made him the first ever sitting US President to appear as a guest on a daytime TV talk show.
Obama's birthplace of Hawaii makes him the first U.S. president not born in the continental United States.
The character of Matt Santos in 'The West Wing' is based on him.
The first US President to be born after the Vietnam War started.
Is a big fan of the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man and collected the comics as a youth.
Counts "Homeland" (2011) as one of his favorite TV shows.
First U.S. President to be personally presented with an Apple iPad 2 by Steve Jobs before it was officially released domestically.
Notable
for being the first United States President to participate in social
media. He is the first President to have a personal Facebook page and a
Twitter account, and the first President to hold Q&A sessions via
those forums and YouTube.
Personal Quotes
[from keynote speech given at the 2004 Democratic party national
convention] There's not a liberal America and a conservative America.
There's the United States of America. We worship an awesome God in the
blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our
libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states,
and have gay friends in the red states. There are patriots who opposed
the war, and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us
pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the
United States of America.
And it lives on in those Americans --
young and old, rich and poor, black and white, Latino and Asian and
Native American, gay and straight -- who are tired of a politics that
divides us and want to recapture the sense of common purpose that we had
when John Kennedy was President of the United States of America.
[regarding former President Bill Clinton's support for his wife--and Obama's opponent for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination--Hillary Rodham Clinton] Sometimes I don't know who I'm running against.
[when asked whether he would call on Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton
to release their tax returns, after Hilary loaned $5 million of her own
money to her campaign] I'll just say that I've released my tax returns.
That's been a policy I've maintained consistently. I think the American
people deserve to know where you get your income from. But I'll leave
it up to you guys to chase it down . . . I think we set the bar in terms
of transparency and disclosure that has been a consistent theme of my
campaign and my career in politics.
In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
When
I am this party's [Democratic party] nominee, my opponent will not be
able to say that I voted for the war in Iraq; or that I gave [George W. Bush] the benefit of the doubt on Iran; or that I supported Bush-Cheney [former VP Dick Cheney]
policies of not talking to leaders that we don't like. And he will not
be able to say that I wavered on something as fundamental as whether or
not it is okay for America to torture - because it is NEVER okay. That's
why I am in it. As President, I will end the war in Iraq. We will have
our troops home in sixteen months. I will close Guantanamo. I will
restore habeas corpus. I will finish the fight against Al Qaeda. And I
will lead the world to combat the common threats of the 21st century -
nuclear weapons and terrorism; climate change and poverty; genocide and
disease. And I will send once more a message to those yearning faces
beyond our shores that says, "You matter to us. Your future is our
future. And our moment is now."
This time we want to talk about
the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and
white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native
American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells
us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us
are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids,
they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st
century economy. Not this time.
Change is coming to America.
In
America, we have this strong bias toward individual action. You know,
we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both
guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not
sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective
institutions and organizations.
In Washington, the call this the
Ownership Society, and it is especially tempting because each of us
believes we will always be the winner in life's lottery, that we're the
one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won't be the chump
who Donald Trump says: "You're fired!"
In America, we have this
strong bias toward individual action. You know we idolize the John Wayne
hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But
individual actions, individual dreams are not sufficient. We must unite
in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.
In
Washington, we call this the Ownership society, and it is especially
tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in
life's lottery, that we're the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or
at least we won't be the chump who Donald Trump says: "You're fired!"
To
avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The
more politically active black students. The foreign students. The
Chicanos. The Marxist professors and the structural feminists and punk
rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.
At night in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon,
Eurocentrism and patriarchy. When we ground our cigarettes in the
hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,
we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints. We weren't
indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.
Katy Perry 
