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Barack Hussein Obama II was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.

Barack’s mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression, and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he marched across Europe in Patton’s army. Her mother went to work on a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to Hawaii.

It was there, at the University of Hawaii, where Barack’s parents met. His mother was a student, and his father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams in America.

Barack’s father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.

Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.

The group had some success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, he needed the skills that only a more professional education could offer.

He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for seven years.

In 2003, Barack launched his improbable race for the United States Senate. Even with many primary contenders, an imported Republican challenger and a budget six times smaller than his opponent’s, Barack won a landslide victory. Even then, he stood out alone among the major candidates, opposing the war in Iraq.

As a US Senator, Barack has continued to work on the issues that represent the ideals and aspirations of so many. He’s helped pass major measures that combat the international trafficking of nuclear weapons, promote the use of alternative fuels, and open up the budget process to greater public scrutiny. In all of these efforts, he’s brought Democrats and Republicans together for the common good.

Above all his accomplishments and experiences, Barack is most proud and grateful for his family. His wife, Michelle, and his two daughters, Malia, 8, and Sasha, 5, live on Chicago’s South Side where they attend Trinity United Church of Christ.

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