| Barack Obama is the 44th US President, who took the office in January, 2009. He was elected to this post from the Democratic Party and became the first black to head the country in the history of the United States. He was the senator from Illinois state earlier during the period 2005 - 2008. After 2004, he became one of the most popular politicians from the Democratic Party in USA. In 2009, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Barack Hussein Obama, Jr was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents met each other at the University of Hawaii while studying the Russian language. His father, was a black Kenyan, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., who was born in Kenya to the Luo tribe and worked as a shepherd in his childhood. Obama Sr went to the USA to study economics, leaving behind his pregnant wife at home, with whom he did not divorce. Mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a white American, who studied anthropology. When Barack was still a child, his father left for Harvard to continue his studies but could not take his family along due to financial problems. When his son was two years old, Obama Sr went to Kenya, where he became an economist in the government. He divorced Barack's mother and before his death in a car accident in 1982, he saw his son only once when Barack Obama Jr. was ten years old. In his life, Obama Sr. married four times and fathered eight children.
Education and beginning of his career:
When Barack was six years old, Ann Dunhum once again married a foreign student, an Indonesian. Along with his mother and stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, the boy went to Indonesia, where he spent four years studying in one of Jakarta's Government schools. Later, he returned to Hawaii and lived with his maternal grandparents. During his school years, Barack Obama worked part-time in the ice-cream shop Baskin-Robbins. In 1979, Obama completed private schooling at the Punahou School in Honolulu. During his school years, Barack Obama played basketball with special interest: in 1979, he won the state championship for the Punahou school team. In his memoirs, published in 1995, Obama recalled having tried marijuana and cocaine during his senior classes of school and his progress dropped.
After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles, then transferred to Columbia University, graduating in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in political science and International relations. After graduating from college, Obama worked as a consultant in the Business International Corporation and later in the New York Public Interest Research Group, where he dealt with issues related to ecology. However in 1985, he quit his corporate career and shifted to Chicago, where he worked in one of the church charitable groups . The election of Harold Washington a black lawyer and politician, to the post of Mayor of Chicago in 1983, prompted Obama to take up the charity work. Even Obama had forwarded a job request to Harold Washington, but no reply was received.
In spite of the fact that Obama never met Washington, the success of the former black mayor of Chicago, which was earlier managed by white leaders, became an example of political success for him.
In the role of "community organizer" in the Gamaliel Foundation, Obama helped the underprivileged inhabitants of Chicago, and was an initiator of programs for the construction of residential homes for low-income citizens. As it is stated in one of the Obama's sites, the experience gathered while working in charity organizations made him realize that reforms in legislation and politics are the need of the hour to improve the life of the people. In mid 1988, he visited Kenya for the first time, where he met his father's relatives.
In 1988, Obama took admission at the Harvard Law School, where in 1990, he became the first African American Editor of the prestigious university's “Harvard Law Review”. This post was considered as the highest post for students in the Harvard Law School. During summer vacations in college, Obama worked in legal firms such as Sidley & Austin (1989) and Hopkins & Sutter (1990). In 1991, Obama received the Doctor of Law degree with distinction (magna cum laude) and returned to Chicago, where he started legal practice, taking up the cases of victims of various kinds of discrimination in court. Also, till 2004, he took classes on constitutional law at the law school of the University of Chicago and worked over electoral issues in a small legal firm "Project Vote", involving poor and immigrants in the electoral activity.
In 1992, Barack Obama became one of founders of the non-profit organization "Public Allies" for improving the skills of young managers. During the period 1993 - 2004, he worked in the law office of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland and continued to work for "social organization". He worked as a lawyer till his licence expired in 2002. During this period, Obama became popular as a liberal, a staunch antagonist of creation of NAFTA - North American Free Trade Area, fights against racial discrimination and a supporter of a general medical insurance system.
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On the campaign trail, Michelle Obama compared the president with Luke Skywalker and said that he will 'use "the Force" in the upcoming elections'. In fact, President Obama is a long Star Wars fan, as well as his wife and the daughters. The photos of Obama playing with a Star Wars lightsaber at the White House became an instant Internet sensation when many Star Wars bloggers wrote that President Obama is secretly a Jedi Knight.
