# data[].attributes.body
Obama Biography

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Barack H. Obama is the 44th president of the United States. Kids learn about his biography and life story.

# data[].attributes.body
Obama Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Barack Obama was the first African American to be elected president of the United States. In 2008 he defeated John McCain to become the country's 44th president. Obama was...

# data[].attributes.body
Obama Information

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
What is Barack Obama known for?

Barack Obama is best known for being the first African American president of the United States.

Barack Obama II was born in 1961 in Hawaii. His parents were Ann Durham from Kansas and Barack Obama Sr. from Kenya. They had met while they were both students at the University of Hawaii.

Obama Sr. left the family when Barack was two, eventually returning to Kenya. Ann later married a man named Lolo Soetoro, another student at the University of Hawaii who was from Indonesia.

For about four years, Barack lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather.

His mother was worried about Barack's education and sent him to live with his grandparents in Hawaii, where he attended a private school called the Punahou School.

After graduation, Barack went to Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years, then to Columbia University in New York City. He graduated with a degree in political science in 1983.

Early Career

Obama had several different jobs after completing college. He worked as a researcher for a year at a business consulting firm. Next, he became a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago.

As an organizer, Obama thought he could accomplish more with a law degree. He decided to study at Harvard University.

At Harvard, Obama was an exceptional student. He was the first African American to become the president of a prestigious journal called the Harvard Law Review.

His historic accomplishment got national attention, and Obama received a contract to write a book about race relations. The book was called Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

He later directed Illinois Project Vote, which aimed to encourage more black voters to vote in the 1992 election.

After that, he became an attorney with a civil rights law firm and a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.

Family Life

After his first year at Harvard, Obama had a summer internship at a law firm called Sidley and Austin.

His supervisor was Michelle Robinson, a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School from Chicago's South Side.

Michelle and Barack eventually fell in love. They dated for four years and were married in 1992. The couple lived in Hyde Park in Chicago.

Their daughter Malia was born in 1998 and followed by a second daughter, Natasha (nicknamed Sasha) in 2001.

Political Career

In 1996, Obama's political career began when he ran for the Illinois State Senate and won. In the State Senate, Obama was a leader in helping children, the elderly, the poor, and labor unions.

He served in the Illinois State Senate until 2004, when he was elected to the United States Senate. That same year, Obama was selected to make a speech at the Democratic National Convention.

His speech was extremely popular and Obama received major national attention.

A phrase from his speech even became the title of his next book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. The book became a bestseller.

In 2007, Obama announced that he would run in the 2008 presidential election.

After he defeated Hilary Clinton to secure the Democratic nomination, Obama chose Joseph (Joe) Biden, a Senator from Delaware, as his running mate.

Obama and Biden ran against Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin. Obama's charisma, interesting background, and inspiring speeches drew large crowds everywhere he campaigned.

After a historically large voter turnout, Obama was elected president. He became the first African American president in United States history.

Presidency

When Obama took office, he was facing some big challenges. The economy was struggling, and U.S. troops were still involved in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

During his first two years as president, Obama worked on healthcare reform, improving the economy, and bringing most of the U.S. troops home from Iraq.

He signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010. Often called "Obamacare," the act was designed to make health insurance more affordable for American people.

Later, Obama focused on gun control, immigration reform, and climate change. Many of Obama's initiatives did not pass through the Republican-controlled House and Senate.

During Obama's presidency, the leader of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden, was finally captured and killed.

Obama also significantly improved foreign relations and perceptions of the United States around the world.

Some of his accomplishments include opening diplomatic relations with Cuba and making a nuclear program agreement with Iran.

In 2009, Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people."

After the Presidency

After serving two terms as president, Obama remained with his family in Washington, DC, where his youngest daughter finished high school in 2019.

For the most part, the family has kept a low profile. Both Barack and Michelle have taken on charitable causes, and both signed a book deal.

Michelle's memoir, Becoming, was published in 2018. Barack continues to work on his third book.

Obama is also working on opening the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which will feature a museum, forum, library, plaza, and athletic center.

Fun Facts About Barack Obama

Barack Obama was the first president to be born outside of the continental United States.

Obama's name means "one who is blessed" in Swahili.

He can speak Indonesian and Spanish.

In 2006, Obama won a Grammy Award for narrating the audio version of his memoir, Dreams of My Father.

Obama is an avid sports fan who is especially interested in basketball.

His Secret Service handlers gave him the code name "Renegade."

Obama was named Time magazine's Person of the Year in both 2008 and 2012.
US Presidents

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Barack Obama Facts For Kids - US Presidents ([year])

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Barack Obama is best known for being the first African American president of the United States. Barack Obama II was born in 1961 in Hawaii. His parents were Ann Durham from Kansas and Barack Obama Sr. from Kenya. They had met while they were both students at the University of Hawaii.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
NAME: Barack Hussein Obama

NICKNAME: Barry

BORN: August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii

TIME IN OFFICE: January 20, 2009, to January 20, 2017

VICE PRESIDENT: Joseph R. Biden

POLITICAL PARTY: Democrat

EARLY LIFE

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he was raised by his mother and her parents. He was the first president born there and the first to be born after the country had 50 states.

Obama attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, California, before transferring to New York's Columbia University. He took a break from school to volunteer in Chicago, Illinois, before earning a law degree from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After winning election to the Illinois State Senate in 1996, Obama won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2004 and then the presidency in 2008.

MAKING HISTORY

A Democrat, Obama became the first African American to run for president on a major political party's ticket. He then went on to become the first African American to be elected president of the United States. (His white mother was from Kansas; his black father from Kenya, a country in Africa.) He took office during the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression during the 1930s, when one-fourth of all workers were unemployed and people traveled the country looking for food and work. Many called the new crisis the Great Recession.

With help from the Democrat-controlled Congress, Obama worked to improve the economy and ultimately added jobs for 75 straight months, the longest streak in American history. But some parts of the country still struggled with poverty, and the number of people who didn't make enough money to live comfortably reached an all-time high in 2010. Anger spread when people felt left behind. The Democrats soon lost control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and Obama struggled to pass legislation.

PRIORITIZING HEALTH CARE

Obama's biggest goal as president was to help all citizens afford health care. At the time, almost 50 million Americans didn't have health insurance, which meant that some families didn't have the money to go to the doctor. Obama wanted to change that.

Obama called his health care plan the Affordable Care Act (ACA); it later became nicknamed Obamacare. Although Republicans opposed the plan, saying it was too expensive for the government to fund, it was signed into law in 2010. But within seven minutes of the act's passage, 13 states sued the federal government for forcing individuals to buy insurance. (Under theACA, most people were required to have health insurance or they'd have to pay a penalty.) The states claimed the new act was unconstitutional, meaning Obama couldn't make the states put it into action.

The ACA took effect in 2014 after the Supreme Court had eventually declared it constitutional. The act guaranteed access to health care options for all Americans who didn't get it through their jobs. But Republicans, who wanted less government involvement in people's lives, still didn't agree with the act. And some people who had the insurance said it was just as expensive, or more expensive, than their previous plans which were no longer available to them. The Affordable Care Act remains controversial today, with many people fighting against it.

FIGHTING TERRORISM

Although the economy continued to improve in the United States, Obama faced challenges in other countries. The United States was fighting two wars in the Middle Eastern countries of Afghanistan and Iraq. President George W. Bush had sent troops to Afghanistan after the terror attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. Bush hoped to capture those responsible for the 9/11 attacks, including al Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. Bush also sent troops to Iraq in 2003, after rumors that the country was hiding dangerous weapons that the president wanted to find and destroy.

Bush's decision to attack these countries was met with general support at first, but by the time Obama became president, public opinion had changed. Some 7,000 American soldiers had died at this point, with an additional 50,000 more wounded. Many Americans wanted these wars to be over. Obama's administration experienced a victory on May 1, 2011, when a group of Navy SEALs (a special military group) acted on Obama's command to strike at a house where bin Laden was hiding. His death during the raid was a blow to al Qaeda and gave some U.S. citizens hope that progress was being made in the fight against terrorism.

By the end of 2011, Obama had withdrawn all combat troops from Iraq. But U.S. troops were still fighting in Afghanistan by the end of his two terms, something many people disagreed with. The rise of another terrorist group in the region, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), continued the war against terrorism throughout Obama's presidency.

OPENING DOORS

Despite wars overseas, Obama reached out to other nations in hopes of maintaining peace. In 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower cut ties with the island nation of Cuba because of its support for the communist Soviet Union (now Russia). Obama tried to ease those tensions by re-opening an embassy there in 2015. He also went to Hiroshima, Japan, where the United States dropped a nuclear bomb in 1945 during World War II. He was the first sitting president to visit the city since that event. For his peace efforts, in 2009 he became the fourth president to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

SUPREME COURT SHAKE-UP

During the first two years of Obama's presidency, he appointed two new justices to the Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States. Obama replaced the retiring male justices with women: Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, the first person of Latino heritage on the high court. For the first time, the court had three female justices. Obama's new additions to the Court were part of several historic decisions, including its marriage equality ruling on June 26, 2015. The decision legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

The death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, Obama's final year of office, gave him another opportunity to add a new justice. But his Republican opponents worried that he would appoint someone who would change how the court made decisions. They declined to consider Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, saying that it was an election year. (No Supreme Court nominee had been denied a hearing during an election year before this.) The seat remained empty through the end of Obama's presidency, the longest in Supreme Court history. The remaining eight justices continued to work, but important matters were left unresolved when they deadlocked with 4-4 votes.

LASTING LEGACY

Obama left office after two terms in January 2017 with a 60 percent approval rating, higher than most presidents at the end of their presidency. He remained in Washington, D.C., where he and his wife, Michelle, started the Obama Foundation to provide mentoring and education to kids, and to award scholarships to college students.

Obama made history by being the first African American to win the presidency. As a recent president, however, his legacy is still being determined. What future presidents do with Obama's policies and how involved Obama gets in world politics will help shape how his presidency is perceived in the future.

From the Nat Geo Kids books Our Country's Presidents by Ann Bausum and Weird But True Know-It-All: U.S. Presidents by Brianna Dumont, revised for digital by Avery Hurt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Learn about the life and achievements of the 44th president of the United States.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Barack Hussein Obama II ( /b ə ˈ r ɑː k h uː ˈ s eɪ n oʊ ˈ b ɑː m ə / i ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician. He was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He was the first African-American to hold the office. Before becoming president, he was a U.S. senator from Illinois and served from 2005 to 2008. He is a Democrat.

Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He married Michelle Robinson in 1992. They have two daughters.

Obama was inaugurated in January 2009 as the first African American mixed-race president. As president, he slowly ended US participation in the Iraq War, having prepared the country to defend itself. The al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was killed while Obama was in office. Also, he contributed to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (often called "Obamacare") which changed many health care laws. He also enacted many acts to create public works jobs to help the economy. He became the first president to openly express support for gay marriage, and proposed gun control as a result of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Obama left office in January 2017 and was succeeded by Republican Donald Trump. He now lives in Washington, D.C. He is ranked very high in presidential opinion polls.

Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children (called Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in 1961) in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is the first President to have been born in Hawaii. His father was a black exchange student from Kenya named Barack Obama Sr. He died in a motorcycle accident in Kenya in 1982. His mother was a white woman from Kansas named Ann Dunham, who was an anthropologist and died in 1995. He spent most of his childhood in Hawaii and Chicago, Illinois, although he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia with his mother and stepfather from age 6 to age 10. He later moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents.

He started college at Occidental College in Los Angeles, and graduated from Columbia University in New York City. After taking time off as a community organizer, Obama went to law school at Harvard University. After law school, Obama worked for a law firm in Hyde Park, Chicago.

Obama has been married to Michelle Obama since 1992. She has a law degree from Harvard Law School. She worked as a lawyer. They have two daughters, Malia Ann, who was born in 1998 and Natasha ("Sasha"), born in 2001. They were born at University of Chicago Medical Center in Chicago. They lived in Chicago, but moved into the White House on January 20, 2009.

Obama has a half sister who is a teacher in Hawaii. His father died from a car accident in Kenya. His mother died of ovarian cancer. His maternal grandmother died just before Obama won the election to become President.

Before becoming president

Obama worked for Alice Palmer, an Illinois state senator. In 1995 she chose not to run for re-election so that she could run for U.S. Congress, and Obama decided to run for her Illinois state senate seat. Palmer lost her election for U.S. Congress, so she tried to keep her seat in the state senate, but she did not have enough time to meet the rules of the election. Obama's team said that she could not be on the ballot, and the election rulemakers agreed. Obama won the election and became an Illinois state senator. He was state senator from 1997 to 2004.

While he was Illinois state senator, he wrote a law that required police to keep records on the race of people they stopped. The law that he wrote also forced police to videotape when they talked to people they suspect of murder. He taught law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School. Judge and political teacher Abner J. Mikva taught Obama politics and became his mentor. During his early political career, Obama would make appearances and debate on Chicago Tonight.

Obama ran for the U.S. Senate. While running for Senate, John Kerry asked him to speak at the Democratic National Convention. He spoke on television. He was a U.S. Senator from 2005 to 2008.

Obama won the presidential election of 2008.

Presidential campaigns

2008 presidential campaign

Obama's presidential campaign for the White House started in early June 2008 when he defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primaries. Hillary Clinton was favored to win but Obama won many smaller state caucuses (local party elections) by having a lot of volunteers. He decided not to accept government money for his campaign so that he could accept more private money under Campaign finance reform in the United States. He raised the most amount of money ever for a presidential campaign.

Obama's campaign theme was that he was a man of hope and change. He was also against the war in Iraq. He was in favor of giving money to American car companies. He was in favor of sending more troops to Afghanistan.

During the campaign, some people said that Obama's friends were Tony Rezko, a landlord, and former revolutionary Bill Ayers; Obama said that they were not his friends. Obama also had trouble when his minister at church, Jeremiah Wright, was videotaped criticizing America. During the campaign, Obama said that his opponent, Republican candidate John McCain, was just like George W. Bush, something that John McCain said was not true. He ran with Joe Biden as his candidate for Vice President.

He defeated McCain in the election on November 4 by a wide electoral majority of 365 to 173, meaning that he won the most votes in enough states to send 365 people to officially elect him. The popular vote (based on the total number of votes across the country) was closer, with Obama winning 53%, McCain 46%.

2012 presidential campaign

Obama announced he was running for president again in April 2011 when he posted a video on his website. Because he was already the president, there were very few other Democrats who tried to oppose him. He won the democratic nomination easily. Their opponents in the Republican party this time were Mitt Romney, who was running for president, and Paul Ryan, who was running for vice president.

In the election on November 6, Obama and Joe Biden defeated Romney and Ryan by a majority of 332 to 206 electoral votes. This meant that, even though it was still large, his majority was smaller than in 2008. In terms of the popular vote, Obama won 51.1% and Romney won 47.2%.

Presidency (2009-2017)

First term (2009-13)

Obama was first sworn in as president on January 20, 2009.

Great Recession

He continued the financial bailout that George W. Bush started, giving billions of dollars to car companies and banks so that they would not go bankrupt. He signed an act written by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd which would regulate Wall Street (the financial industry) to try to prevent another recession like this from happening again.

Nobel Peace Prize

Obama received the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize on October 9, 2009. He noted that his efforts were humble, but he donated the prize money to several charities.

Tea Party movement

Though his popularity was very high (around 70% approval) when he entered office, his approval ratings fell to 45% percent during the year of 2010. He received much criticism from Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and members of the Tea Party because they believe that the federal government is becoming too big and spending too much money and that his programs are not the best for the country.

Obama made a plan to slowly withdraw troops from Iraq, ending the War in Iraq by the end of 2011, while adding more troops to Afghanistan to help the United States win the War in Afghanistan. He also decided that the United States should help in the war against Libya. He has said several times that he wants to improve U.S. relations with the Muslim world. Obama reduced US participation in the Iraq War and continued the war on terror which resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011. Obama started a no-fly-zone policy on the Libyan civil war that ended in October 2011 with the killing of Muammar al-Gaddafi.

Economic policy

With rising economic deficits (the amount of money the government borrows each month) under his administration, he called for taxes to be increased on the rich. He criticized his Republican opponents for wanting to cut welfare benefits for the poor rather than raising taxes to help pay down the debt.

LGBT rights

He signed the Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 in 2010, allowing openly gay men and openly lesbian women in the armed forces. On May 9, 2012, he became the first sitting US President to openly support legalizing same-sex marriage.

Gun control

Before his second term began, there has been debating of guns because of the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that happened on December 14, 2012, as well as shootings in the past.

2012 re-election campaign

On April 4, 2011 Obama said that he would run for re-election for a second term in 2012 in a video titled "It Begins with Us" that he posted on his website and filed election papers with the Federal Election Commission. He was officially nominated as his party's nominee on September 6, 2012. Mitt Romney was officially nominated as his opponent by the Republican party on August 30, 2012. While the election results were very close, Obama easily won the electoral college votes he needed to win a second term. Obama and Romney spent more than $2 billion on advertising during the election campaign.

On December 21, 2012, Obama nominated John Kerry for United States Secretary of State during his second term. Kerry was sworn in on February 1, 2013.

Second term (2013-17)

Main article: Second inauguration of Barack Obama

Obama was inaugurated for a second term privately (only his family members could see) on January 20, 2013, at the White House. The next day, January 21, 2013, he was inaugurated again, this time in public, at the United States Capitol. This was because January 20, 2013, was on a Sunday.

The start of his second term in 2013 had a few setbacks. With the NSA, people were upset at the Obama administration that the government was possibly listening to their phone calls. His party (the Democrats) also lost the Congressional elections. Because of disagreements between Democrats and Republicans in Congress, neither side was getting anything done and Obama resulted in using his Executive Order (his power as president) to help reform things like the immigration system.

He visited South Africa in late June 2013. Prior to visiting South Africa, he visited Senegal. He visited Robben Island, where Mandela was imprisoned. He did not meet with Nelson Mandela.

2013 United States federal government shutdown

The United States government shutdown occurred on October 1, 2013. On October 17, 2013, Obama signed a bill that ended the United States government shut down.

Presidential Medals of Freedom

Obama awarded several people, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton and media mogul Oprah Winfrey for the Presidential Medal of Freedom on November 20, 2013. He has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to many people, such as Stephen Hawking, Sandra Day O'Connor, Chita Rivera, Loretta Lynn and George H. W. Bush.

Death of Nelson Mandela

Minimum wage and college

He supported increasing the minimum wage, requiring women to be paid the same as men at the same job, and has called for the first 2 years of college to be fully government-funded for students who study full-time and get good grades.

Legalization of same-sex marriage

Obama supported LGBT members, and successfully convinced the courts in 2015 that same-sex marriage should be legal in the United States.

Climate change

Obama was also concerned about climate change, and promoted the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court

Post-presidency (2017-present)

As it is not possible for a person to be president for three terms, Obama could not run for president again. He was succeeded by Republican Donald Trump in early 2017. He left office with a 60% approval rating.

Even though he is not the president anymore, Obama still owns a house in Washington, D.C.

Obama and his wife, Michelle, spend time making speeches and attending events. They also run a charity called the Obama Foundation, and own Higher Ground Productions, a company which makes movies. The company was hired by Netflix to make documentaries. One of their documentaries, American Factory, won an Academy Award for being the best documentary of 2019.

He released his presidential memoir, A Promised Land, on November 17, 2020.

In May 2020, Obama criticized President Trump for his response to the coronavirus pandemic, saying that it is "an absolute chaotic disaster".

Obama wrote a presidential memoir, in a $65million deal with Penguin Random House. The book, A Promised Land, was released on November 17, 2020.

In February 2021, Obama and musician Bruce Springsteen started a podcast called Renegades: Born in the USA where the two talk about "their backgrounds, music and their 'enduring love of America.'" In late 2021, Regina Hicks had signed a deal with Netflix, in a venture with his and Michelle's Higher Ground to develop comedy projects. On March 4, 2022, Obama won an Audio Publishers Association (APA) Award in the best narration by the author category for the narration of his memoir A Promised Land.

On April 5, 2022, Obama visited the White House for the first time since leaving office, in an event celebrating the 12th annual anniversary of the signing of the Affordable Care Act.

In 2022, he narrated the Netflix documentary series Our Great National Parks, which later won him a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator.

In June 2022, it was announced that the Obamas and their podcast production company, Higher Ground, signed a multi-year deal with Audible.

In September 2022, Obama visited the White House to unveil his and Michelle's official White House portraits.

In Spanish: Barack Obama para niños

# data[].attributes.body
Obama Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Fun Kids - the UK's children's radio station

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 10 Facts about Barack Obama - Fun Kids - the UK’s children’s radio station

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Barack Obama for Kids | Learn about the life and contributions of the 44th president of the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Educational Videos for Students (Cartoons on Bullying, Leadership & More)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Barack Obama: 10 Fun Facts you might not know | Educational Cartoons for Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Barack Obama Biography For Children ✍️ Mary Nhin 🎨 Yuliia Zolotova 🎙️ Aaliya 📢 Read Aloud