Barack Obama as America's 44th President

The Commander in Chief's Strengths and Struggles

Sep 13, 2009

Barack Obama has faced challenges and had to make hard decisions long before he became President of the United States of America.

The son of Ann Dunham and Barack Obama, Sr. and the 44th president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His Kenyan born father had come to Honolulu to attend the University of Hawaii at Manoa. While attending the university, the senior Obama met his future wife, Ann Dunham.

Childhood Struggles and Beginnings for President Barack Obama

Ann and Barack Sr.’s marriage was brief. Barack was two years old when his parents separated. They would go on to divorce. Nearly eight years would pass before Barack and his father, who had returned to his native land of Kenya, spoke again. They would speak only once before Barack Sr. died in a 1982 car accident. Barack’s mother’s second marriage to Lolo Soetoro would produce another child, a daughter named Maya Soetoro Ng.

Barack Hussein earned high honors while he attended school. During this time he lived with his maternal grandparents in Honolulu, Hawaii and attended Punahou School, a private academy. Despite his academic achievements, at times Barack struggled with the perceptions and treatment that his mixed racial heritage brought him. He was one of only three African American students in his entire school. As noted at Biography, during his teeange years, to deal with the misperceptions around his mixed racial heritage Barack turned to narcotics and alcohol.

After he graduated from high school in Hawaii, he enrolled at New York City’s Columbia University. While at the school he majored in political science. New York City undoubtedly gave him a different view of America’s political, social and racial landscapes than Hawaii did.

Shifts in Community Focus

The shift from island living to a major metropolis lifestyle found Barack exploring his African roots and beginning to draw toward initiatives that would allow him to use his studies and personal experiences to help the communities that he lived in and around.

His early community organization efforts began in Harlem. From Harlem Barack relocated to Chicago’s South Side where he worked with area churches on community based initiatives. Years later while campaigning for the presidency, Barack would withdraw his membership to one of the churches he worked with during those early years.

The church was Trinity United Church of Christ. The split would come with mixed feelings for the Obamas but a sense of necessity after the church’s pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright made inflammatory racial and political remarks from the pulpit as well as during widely distributed interviews.

Trinity United Church of Christ was the same church that Barack would marry his wife Michelle Robinson, a former practicing attorney, in on October 18, 1992. Reverend Jeremiah Wright presided over the marriage ceremony.

Finding Love with Michelle Obama

It was at Harvard University that Barack and Michelle met. After he graduated from Columbia University, Barack enrolled at Harvard in order to get his law degree. He became the school’s first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. He would graduate from the school magna cum laude in 1991. Post graduation, Michelle was assigned to mentor the recently graduated Barack which is how the couple met.

Over time the pair’s relationship deepened into a courtship and eventually marriage. Michelle’s Chicago South Side roots helped them decide to remain in Chicago. Barack also saw the political and social possibilities that the Windy City held, the same city that elected its first African American mayor, Harold Washington on April 12, 1983.

Barack Obama’s Political Aspirations

In the early 1990s Barack started to become increasingly active in the political arena. He worked on voter registration drives to help Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Three years later Barack ran for a senate seat within the state of Illinois. He also wrote his first book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. The audio version of the book would earn him a Grammy Award.

A first run in 2000 for a seat in the United States House of Representatives was not met with success. In 2005 Barack’s second attempt to gain a seat in the House proved successful making the new senator the fifth African American to hold a House seat. He was sworn into office on January 5, 2005. The political success came the same year that his mother died from ovarian cancer.

The next years would be a whirlwind of activity for Barack, Michelle and their two daughters, Malia and Sasha, born 1998 and 2001 respectively. Barack would pen his second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream in 2006. He would also begin to set his sights on a run for the White House.

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