• Page:
• «Prev
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next»

Print Article

In the News: President Obama addressed a town hall meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, and held a primetime news conference for his first 100 days. Traditionally, commentators have used the milestone to assess presidents' early successes and failures. The latest polls suggest President Obama continues to enjoy a high level of popularity, but Obama hopes for more. He told Midwesterners Wednesday (April 29, 2009) that he's "pleased with the progress we've made but I'm not satisfied."

Since taking office on January 20th, Obama has, among other things, passed an economic stimulus package, ordered the closure of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, set a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and opened a diplomatic dialogue with countries like Iran and Cuba.

Obama reached his 100th day with strong public backing. An Associated Press poll found that 64 percent of Americans approve of the president's job performance and 48 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction. The "right direction" number is up eight points since February and 31 points since October, the month before Obama's election.

Biography: Barack Hussein Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. He grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British. Although reared among Muslims, Obama, Sr., became an atheist at some point.

Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he signed up for service in World War II and marched across Europe in Patton’s army. Dunham’s mother went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G. I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved to Hawaii.

Meantime, Barack’s father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya pursue his dreams in Hawaii. At the time of his birth, Obama’s parents were students at the East–West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Obama’s parents separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama’s father went to Harvard to pursue Ph. D. studies and then returned to Kenya.

His mother married Lolo Soetoro, another East–West Center student from Indonesia. In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro–Ng was born. Obama attended schools in Jakarta, where classes were taught in the Indonesian language.

Four years later when Barack (commonly known throughout his early years as "Barry") was ten, he returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, and later his mother (who died of ovarian cancer in 1995).

He was enrolled in the fifth grade at the esteemed Punahou Academy, graduating with honors in 1979. He was only one of three black students at the school. This is where Obama first became conscious of racism and what it meant to be an African–American.

In his memoir, Obama described how he struggled to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. He saw his biological father (who died in a 1982 car accident) only once (in 1971) after his parents divorced. And he admitted using alcohol, marijuana and cocaine during his teenage years.

After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York, graduating in 1983 with a degree in political science.

After working at Business International Corporation (a company that provided international business information to corporate clients) and NYPIRG, Obama moved to Chicago in 1985. There, he worked as a community organizer with low-income residents in Chicago’s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city’s South Side.

• Page:
• «Prev
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next»

advertisement