BARACK OBAMA BIOGRAPHY

QUICK FACTS Born: August 4, 1961 (Hawaii) Lives in: Chicago, Illinois Zodiac Sign: Leo Height: 6' 1" (1.87m) Family: Married wife Michelle in 1992, 2 daughters Malia and Sasha Parents: Barack Obama, Sr. (from Kenya) and Ann Dunham (from Kansas) Religion: United Church of Christ Drives a: Ford Escape hybrid, Chrysler 300C Education: - Graduated: Columbia University (1983) - Major: Political Science - Law Degree from Harvard (1991) - Major: J.D. - Magna Cum Laude - Attended: Occidental College Career: U.S. Senator from Illinois sworn in January 4, 2005 Government Committees: - Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee - Foreign Relations Committee - Veterans Affairs Committee - 2005 and 2006: served on the Environment and Public Works Committee Books: - Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995) - The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006) - It Takes a Nation: How Strangers Became Family in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina (2006) Barack Obama, the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois, is the first ever African-American to become the presumptive presidential nominee for a U.S. major political party. On June 3, 2008, he gained enough delegates to be nominated by the Democratic party at its national convention in August. Barack Hussein Obama was born Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was born of Luo ethnicity in Nyanza Province, Kenya. He grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British. Although reared among Muslims, Obama, Sr., became an atheist at some point. Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in Wichita, Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he signed up for service in World War II and marched across Europe in Patton's army. Dunham's mother went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved to Hawaii. Meantime, Barack's father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya pursue his dreams in Hawaii. At the time of his birth, Obama's parents were students at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Obama's parents separated when he was two years old and later divorced. Obama's father went to Harvard to pursue Ph.D. studies and then returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro, another East-West Center student from Indonesia. In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng was born. Obama attended schools in Jakarta, where classes were taught in the Indonesian language. Four years later when Barack (commonly known throughout his early years as "Barry") was ten, he returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, and later his mother (who died of ovarian cancer in 1995).