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Quotes from The Washington Post with Responses (Events That Occurred During His Presidency)

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Quotes from The Washington Post with Responses (Events That Occurred During His Presidency)

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Obama's time in the legislature was initially frustrating. Republicans controlled the state senate, and many of his black Democratic colleagues resented the hardball tactics he had employed against Palmer. But Obama adapted, developing personal relations with legislators of both parties and cultivating Senate Democratic leader Emil Jones, Jr., another African American senator from Chicago, as a mentor.

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After Obama had spent an additional year in New York as a researcher with Business International Group he accepted an offer to work as a community organizer in Chicago's South Side. Obama's main assignment was to launch the church-funded Developing Communities Project and to organize residents of Altgeld Gardens to pressure Chicago's city hall to improve conditions in the poorly maintained public housing project. He had some success, but Obama concluded that, faced with a complex city bureaucracy, "I just can't get things done here without a law degree." In 1988, he enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he excelled as a student, graduating magna cum laude. He also won an election as president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review for the academic year 1990-1991

After directing a voter registration drive aimed at increasing black turnout in the 1992 election Obama accepted positions as an attorney with the civil rights law firm of Miner, Barnhill and Galland and as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. He launched his first campaign for political office in 1996 after his district's state senator, Alice Palmer, decided to run for Congress. Obama announced his candidacy to replace her in the Illinois legislature. When Palmer's congressional campaign faltered, she decided to run for reelection instead. Obama refused to withdraw from the race, and successfully challenged the validity of Palmer's voter petitions,. Obama was easily elected after her name was kept off the ballot.

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Obama's parents, Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr., met as students at the University of Hawaii. His mother was a white American from Kansas, and his father was quite the opposite, a black Kenyan studying in the United States. Obama's father left the family when Obama was only two years old. After further studies at Harvard University, Barack Obama Sr. returned to Kenya, where he died in an automobile accident nineteen years later. Living with his white mother and stepfather after the age of 6, while being half black, had caused quite a problem for Barack. He feels like he's unable to connect to other African Americans because of this. It has caused an identity crisis that Obama still wishes diminish to this day.
During a summer internship at Chicago's Sidley and Austin law firm after his first year at Harvard, Obama met Michelle Robinson. After a four-year courtship, they married in 1992. The Obamas settled in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, where their first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1998 and their second daughter, Natasha (called Sasha), was born in 2001.

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Obama lived with his mother and stepfather in Indonesia from ages 6 through 10. Here he attended Catholic and Muslim schools. His mother was concerned for his education so she sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, He attended Hawaii's prestigious Punahou School from fifth grade through graduation from high school. While he was in school, Obama's mom divorced Soetoro and returned to Hawaii to study cultural anthropology at the university. She then went back to Indonesia to do field research. Living with his grandparents, Obama was an average student, played varsity basketball and, as he later admitted, "dabbled in drugs and alcohol," including marijuana and cocaine. Reflecting on his childhood Obama says "I was raised as an Indonesian child and a Hawaiian child and as a black child and as a white child," Obama later recalled. "And so what I benefited from is a multiplicity of cultures that all fed me."  As for religion, Obama later wrote, because his parents and grandparents were nonbelievers, "I was not raised in a religious household."

Obama left Hawaii for college after graduating form high school, enrolling first at Occidental College in Los Angeles for his freshman and sophomore years. Later he attended Columbia University in New York City. He read deeply and widely about political and international affairs, graduating from Columbia with a political science major in 1983.

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It's not only a surprise, but a real treat to see a president who is so laid back. I think our country needs to be led by a person not much different from Obama. Not only has he 'roasted' celebrities and made jokes during speeches, but he has also visited elementary schools and a left a great mark on the students that he saw and spoke too. When Obama visited Clarence Tinker Elementary School at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa he traded words with a first grader. This first grader's name is Edwin Caleb and their encounter goes as follows. Edwin told the president that he had short hair. Obama then touched the boy's head and said "Mine, too. Here, want to touch it?" Edwin will never forget this conversation he had with the president of his home country and how friendly Obama was while in office.

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Obama knew that he had to speak out about prisons and they actual effect that they have on their prisoners. Obama spoke out about this after he became the first president to visit a federal prison; El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma. He said that although these people who are in prisons, doing time for the mistakes they've made, they are still Americans. Most of the time, those who were in jail don't improve their lives. They get released only to get thrown back in. Obama wants to change this and make sure that they are actually turning their lives around. This all shows that Obama doesn't only care about one minority group, but others as well. He is standing up for his fellow Americans and giving them hope.

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It's interesting that Obama is saying that these wars and hardships from our distant, as well as non-distant past define us. Most people would think that these are negative tings that we shouldn't be recognized for, but Obama expresses the importance of learning from our past.  Fifty years ago no one would have ever thought that one day we would have an African American president. Selma focused on civil right that African Americans didn't have at the time. Obama wishes to progress towards eliminating racism forever. He is a good example that no matter what your race is, you can achieve anything if you put the hard work into it.

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Obama, stepping into the White House, knew exactly what he wished to accomplish. He wanted peace for all Americans, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexuality, or disability and he did exactly that. He changed America and helped make it a less hateful country than it was when he came into office in the years following 9/11.

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Biography (Life Leading Up to Presidency)

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Biography (Life Leading Up to Presidency)

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"In September 2014, the president visited Clarence Tinker Elementary School at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where he and first-grader Edwin Caleb traded hair pats. After Edwin said he had short hair, Obama touched the boy’s head and said: “Mine, too. Here, want to touch it?”

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“The next day, Obama became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison when he went to the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution in Oklahoma. His purpose was clear: “I’m going to shine a spotlight on this issue, because while the people in our prisons have made some mistakes — and sometimes big mistakes — they are also Americans, and we have to make sure that as they do their time and pay back their debt to society that we are increasing the possibility that they can turn their lives around.” ”

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“ “There are places and moments in America where this nation’s destiny has been decided. Many are sites of war — Concord and Lexington, Appomattox, Gettysburg. Others are sites that symbolize the daring of America’s character — Independence Hall and Seneca Falls, Kitty Hawk and Cape Canaveral. Selma is such a place,” Obama said, standing on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. “In one afternoon 50 years ago, so much of our turbulent history — the stain of slavery and anguish of civil war, the yoke of segregation and tyranny of Jim Crow, the death of four little girls in Birmingham, and the dream of a Baptist preacher — all that history met on this bridge.” ”

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“The “Obama Coalition” of African American, white, Latino, Asian American and Native American voters had helped usher in an era in which institutional racism and pervasive inequality would fade as Americans embraced the nation’s multicultural promise.”