Barack Obama

Election of 2012

Barack Obama Research Paper

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father was from Kenya and his mother was from Kansas. Barack Obama’s parents met while they were both in school together at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. They were married on February 2, 1961 and Barack Obama Jr. was born six months after (www.biography.com). Barack Obama’s parents both got into a divorce when Obama was two years old so he and his mother moved to Jakarta, Indonesia. It wasn’t long before Barack moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.

When Obama was living in Hawaii he enrolled at Panahou Academy which was a private school in Honolulu. He was a great basketball player while he was a student at Panahou Academy and when he graduated from there he got academic honors (www.biography.com). While Obama excelled in school sports and in academics, he did admit to past drug use in his high school days when he said “There were times where I experimented with drugs. I drank, you know, in my teenage years.” (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2008/08/obama-on-his-bi/). Obama admitted in an interview that this indeed was his biggest moral failure.

After High School Obama enrolled at Occidental College in Los Angeles, California for two years and then transferring to Colombia University. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science. (www.biography.com). He then worked in business from 1983-1985 and then moved to Chicago, Illinois where he spent 20+ years of his life in. He started to work as a community organizer to help low income people in the communities of Chicago. During his time as a community organizer he also went decided to join the Trinity Unity Church of Christ and where he met his pastor Jeremiah E. Wright. Obama also took a trip to his father’s home country of Kenya, where he wanted to go back to his roots and learn more about his...