Barack Obama’s Road to the White House

When Barack Obama stood outside the Capitol to take the presidential oath of office, he changed history. Obama is the first African American president in the history of the United States. He is also the first person born outside the mainland United States elected to the White House.

Early Life

Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was from Kenya, Africa, and his mother, Ann Dunham, was from Kansas. Dunham and Obama, Sr., met at the University of Hawaii in 1960. Obama, Sr., left very soon after Barack’s birth to attend college at Harvard. Barack Obama, Jr., or “Barry” as he was known as a child, met his father once when he was ten years old. Ann Dunham and Barack Obama, Sr., divorced in 1964. She later married Lolo Soetoro, a foreign student attending college in Hawaii, and the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia. In 1971, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.

Stanley Dunham, Obama’s grandfather, introduced Barry to Frank Marshall Davis. Davis was a writer who had been a civil rights activist during the Great Depression and World War II. Davis was friends with other famous African Americans during that era, such as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Margaret Walker. Obama learned from Davis about the racial prejudices that many African Americans experienced while growing up in the United States.

Education and Early Political Experience

Obama attended Columbia University in New York and graduated with a degree in political science in 1983. In 1985 he moved to Chicago. There he directed a church-based community organization called the Developing Communities Project, or DCP. The DCP provided job training and college preparatory classes to the poor and disadvantaged. Obama returned to college in 1988 and earned a Harvard law degree in 1991. He also served as the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He returned to Chicago and spent the next 12 years as a civil rights lawyer and constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. In Chicago, he met Michelle Robinson, who was also a lawyer. They married in 1992, and now have two daughters, ten-year-old Malia and seven-year-old Sasha.

Obama’s experience as a community volunteer strengthened his interest in politics. He was elected to the Illinois Senate’s 13th District in 1996. There he helped pass ethics reform and state health care laws. He was twice reelected to the state legislature, but in 2000 he lost an attempt to win the district’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

National Exposure

Obama became better known outside Illinois after giving a stirring keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that nominated John Kerry. His speech focused on the opportunities provided by the federal government to his grandmother during and after World War II. His public speaking skills and his emphasis on hope excited some Democrats. They thought that Obama might be a strong presidential candidate in the future.

The time came sooner than many might have guessed. Obama declared his candidacy for Illinois’s U.S. Senate seat in January 2003. He won his Democratic Party primary race in March 2004. Obama was prepared to run against Republican Jack Ryan, but Ryan withdrew from the race amidst scandal. His Republican replacement had only a few months to campaign, and Obama was elected to national office with a strong victory.

Obama’s time as senator was brief. In February 2007, Obama declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States. For the next year and a half, candidate Obama traveled the country explaining his hopeful vision for the United States. Obama’s optimism, youth, and message of hope and change energized Democrats who also wanted a new direction for the federal government.

On his victorious election night, Barack Obama shared his history-making moment with thousands of excited supporters:

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time,…tonight is your answer.

Related Links

• For more information on the First Family, click here.