“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
We are the change that we seek.”
- Barack Obama -
Barack Hussein Obama grew up in the small Nyang’oma Kogelo village in the Nyanza Province of Kenya. Being a brilliant student, he won a scholarship to the University of Hawaii, where he studied economics. He met a young woman named Ann Dunham, and the two were married in Honolulu, Hawaii. On August 4, 1961, their son, Barack Hussein Obama II, was born.
However, the perfect family unit was gone by the time he was two years old. His parents got a divorce, and his father moved back to Kenya. Over the next nineteen years of his life, Obama would only see his father one time before he died in an automobile accident. In 1965, however, his mother met an Indonesian student named Lolo Soetoro, and the two were married (1). Shortly after the wedding, little Barack, his mother, and his new stepfather moved to the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta (2). “I was raised as an Indonesian child and a Hawaiin child and as a black child and as a white child,” Obama would later note as he recounted a childhood in which he attended both Catholic and Muslim schools, “and so what I benefited from is a multiplicity of cultures that all fed me” (1). When Obama was ten, he moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. Ann divorced Soetoro, returned to Hawaii, and then moved back to Indonesia to do field research in cultural anthropology (7).
While living with his grandparents, Obama attended an elite private school called Punahou School where he discovered his love for basketball, dabbled in various kinds of drugs, and soon discovered a love for reading and a desire for social justice. Like many other influential Black figures, Obama discovered racial tensions and racial inequality at a young age as he began to realize that the Black population in Hawaii was very small. The resulting discrimination he witnessed brought him to the realization that he would likely face “glorious burdens” unlike his classmates solely based on his race. “I was trying to raise myself to be a Black man in America,” he recalled, “and beyond my given appearance, no one around me seemed to know what that meant. (8)” During his time in school, he found himself enthralled with the world of reading and spent hours reading from a box full of old books that his grandparents bought from a rummage sale (3). Obama also found himself very interested in political and international affairs, a passion that he explored while pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the Columbia University in New York City. His love for reading grew even more as he found himself exploring political authors as well as the works of William Shakespeare, Freidrich Nietzsche, and Toni Morrison--literary works that expanded his intellectual thoughts and mindset (4).
When telling Obama’s story, it’s impossible not to mention the city of Chicago. Obama’s Chicago story began after he worked as a writer and editor for Business International Corp., a research, publishing, and consulting firm in Manhattan. Soon, he was offered work as a community organizer in the impoverished South Side of Chicago. The position brought him a new and exciting opportunity to better understand the African community, a community he hadn’t gotten to know much about (4, 5). Obama assisted in the launch of the Developing Communities Project, a project that, through churches, advocated and organized for better living conditions and other socioeconomic struggles like little subsidized daycare, the establishment of book clubs, and the creation of youth risk-avoidance services in Chicago schools (6).
While Obama did have many successes through the Developing Communities Project, he felt that he needed a law degree in order to truly make lasting impacts. In 1988, he enrolled at Harvard Law School where he not only excelled in his classes but also became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, a student-run organization that published legal journals. As it was an elected position, Obama, while a liberal, was able to persuade a majority-conservative voting population by promising that he would treat every view fairly (7).
While making a name for himself in his studies and through new platforms, his many accolades were overshadowed by his interest in his mentor, a young woman named Michelle Robinson, whom he met at the Chicago Law firm Sidley Austin. According to Michelle, Obama was actually late to their very first meeting, and she was taken aback for a moment when she finally met him. “I was picturing what Barack Obama on paper would look like,” she stated in her Becoming Book Tour in 2019, “I grew up on the South Side of Chicago with Robinsons and Smiths and Joneses--I didn’t know Barack Obamas…so, I thought I was going to be meeting a nerd, an intellectual nerd, and then I talked to him on the phone and he had the ‘Barack Obama voice’, and I was like ‘Oh! Heyy!”(8). Unsurprisingly, the two fell in love and discussed marriage…a topic that they had somewhat different ideas about.
Michelle explained on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert that Obama “was more hot on [the idea of marriage], he was just being himself… he made an argument [that marriage was not necessary].” Michelle further explained to Colbert that one of their final arguments about marriage took place during a dinner date meant to celebrate Obama’s accomplishment of passing the Harvard University bar exam. While the two clashed over their opposing ideas, an entire dinner passed. It wasn’t until dessert was served that it would come to a close. “The waiter put a platter in front of me with a little box with a ring on it in the middle of the argument,” Michelle explained to Colbert. Michelle was taken back once again, and Obama reacted to Michelle’s surprise in perhaps the most Obama way possible--by opening the box for her, looking her in the eye, and saying, “Now that ought to shut you up” (9).
Now married, Barack and Michelle Obama moved to Hyde Park, a neighborhood in Chicago, and began their political journeys. In particular, Obama helped organize Project Vote. This drive not only helped register tens of thousands of African American voters but also helped President Bill Clinton win Illinois in the 1992 presidential election, the same election in which the first African American woman, Carol Moseley Braun, was elected to the U.S. Senate. Obama even landed his first book deal at this point, and Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, was published. Eventually, he began lecturing at the University of Chicago and working as an attorney. He soon decided to run for his first political office in the Illinois state senate (4). After a fierce campaign in which his opponent was a former senator, Obama won the election and became a state senator in 1996 (3).
It was not an easy time as the young liberal senator found himself in the position of a political minority as Republicans were in control of the senate (10). However, Obama was able to establish unity amongst the state senators and accomplish many things. During his time as state senator, healthcare was revitalized to better assist low-income families, campaign finance regulations were tightened, and criminal justice and welfare laws were reformed (4). In 2002, America was coming to terms with what had just happened in September of 2001. President George W. Bush was about to launch an all-out war on Iraq and Saddam Hussein with congressional approval. Many legislators on both the right and left of the aisle supported this war, including notable and highly respected Democrats like the Clintons.
Obama, on the other hand, supported a different, less popular position towards the war. “I don’t oppose all wars…” he stated in an antiwar rally in Chicago, “I am opposed to [a] dumb war… a rash war… I [know that] Saddam Hussein [is] brutal [and] ruthless].” He continued that while Hussein had gone against many UN decisions, created chemical and biological weapons and that the world “would be better off without him”, he also knew that “Saddam [posed] no imminent and direct threat to the United States or to his neighbors,” due to Iraq’s collapsed economy and faltering military (11).
During his campaign for his second senate term, Obama received national attention for his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Similar to Amanda Gorman’s groundbreaking poem at the 2021 inauguration, the address called for unity in a way that not only explained how all Americans are more alike than different but said that Americans should try inspiring hope in one another through the hard times the nation was facing rather than arguing and polarizing one another (12, 13, 14). This speech aided Obama’s rise in politics, making him one of the most recognizable faces in the Democratic party.
Three years later, Obama announced his bid for president and became the Democratic presidential nominee. His opponent was Vietnam war hero and long-time senator John McCain, but Obama’s running mate was a long-time senator and current President of the United States, Joe Biden. The country faced major problems at this point in history--a financial recession comparable to the Great Depression, the historic Hurricane Katrina that wreaked havoc on New Orleans only a few months before election day, and the Iraqi war. Many wondered if young Senator Obama would be able to win the presidency with the country facing such immense issues, but he won the election in the landslide--not only gaining 192 more electoral votes than McCain but 8.5 million more popular votes--while flipping a total of nine states (15).
Throughout his two terms in office, President Barack Obama had many notable accomplishments. Twenty-seven days after inauguration day, Obama passed the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The act utilized $831 billion in government spending to assist America during the recession. This act launched America into its longest period of economic growth according to the National Bureau of Economic Research--a period that lasted 127 months and was still being felt until the Covid-19 pandemic (17).
Obama also heavily supported gay rights in many ways. In 2009, he worked with Congress to sign the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which sought to limit hate crimes towards LGBTQ+ people by making the punishment for such crimes more severe. He also helped create a long-overdue national HIV/AIDS strategy, supported banning conversion therapy practices, repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” which allowed LGBTQ+ soldiers to not have to worry about their sexual orientation when serving in the armed forces, and heavily supported the Supreme Court’s affirmative ruling on same-sex marriage, calling it “a victory for America” (17, 18).
Near the end of his first term and continuing into his second term, Obama made even greater changes, some widely accepted and others intensely controversial. Obama also ordered the capture and killing of notorious terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden and announced his death on May 12, 2011 (19). On June 15, 2012, he signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) into action in order to assist illegal immigrants in finding paths to citizenship, and in 2016, America became a member of the historic Paris Climate Accord--an alliance that saw the world’s biggest nations coming together to limit greenhouse emissions, the leading factor in climate change (20). His most significant accomplishment overall is the Affordable Care Act, a health care strategy that, while not entirely perfect, launched America’s first national healthcare plan into existence--a project that has faced much criticism but that none have been able to replace (22).
Obama as much as they could. In a reaction to the Affordable Care Act, McConnell stated that Republicans “should-propose and vote on straight repeal, repeatedly…”--a message of clear divisiveness over partisanship (23). McConnell also famously stated that “the single most important thing [Republicans] want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president” (24). Obama’s presidency also faced backlash from those participating in the Tea Party movement who essentially protested everything Obama did in office due to their strong beliefs in conservative principles and ideals(25). Beyond that, rumors emerged around Obama’s citizenship. Known as the “Birther Movement”, Donald Trump, former President of the United States, was a champion of the movement that pushed constant conspiracy theories that stated Obama was not really a U.S. citizen--a false narrative that led to Obama releasing his birth certificate in order to prove that he was born in Hawaii.
Nevertheless, Obama remained cool in his work and avoided making a bad name for himself through unruly behavior and unsportsmanlike conduct. After his second term was finished, Obama continued living in Washington D.C. with his wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia. To them, he will forever be family first and president second, but to the rest of the nation, he will forever be known as one of the most, if not the most, impactful and consequential presidents in American history.
Reflection
While I was born in 1999 and technically lived through both Bill Clinton's time as president and George W. Bush's, Barack Obama will always be my "first" president. I don’t really remember when I first learned about Obama, I just knew that my parents really like him back in 2008--the same year I learned just how uncommon my personal political views were in my community and learning environment. In my fourth-grade social studies class, we had a little mock election to see which way our grade leaned politically. Of course, as the area was highly conservative, John McCain won in a landslide to Obama’s less than ten votes (one vote being cast for Albus Dumbledore by one of my childhood friends). I didn’t know much about politics or government nor, like many eight-year-olds, did I really care. All I remember is that it was pretty cool and new when Obama won the election.
I never looked at or paid much attention to the presidency of Barack Obama, so I don’t have any first-hand experience about what was going on at the time in regards to American politics. However, as I get older and learn more about America, I keep coming back to thank Obama for what he accomplished. For someone like me, someone who was never raised religiously or in any discriminatory way, I never had a problem with members of the LGBTQ+ community. Why care? Yet, I still remember the day gay marriage was legalized and the rainbow lights shining on the White House. Nowadays, based on the people I've met since and my own personal run-ins with thinking I was a part of the LGBTQ+ community at one point, a thought I have discovered to only be a thought, I've come to realize just how important that moment was for so many. America really wasn't the place it is today six years ago--while the conversations for gay rights were happening, they weren't happening nearly as much as in 2015.
We also still see the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) being labeled as one of Obama’s failures, but I now see that it did help support millions of Americans. As Joe Biden said, Obamacare is in fact “a big fucking deal”. Throughout history, so many presidents attempted to create a comprehensive healthcare plan and failed--Obama accomplished it, and, as we’ve seen through the presidency of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, it truly is a more intelligent idea to work on improving upon some of its shortcomings, like the fact that the act does still see millions uninsured. Finally, as I have mentioned before on this website, one of my mom’s and my favorite pastimes is watching videos of Barack Obama simply being himself--a classy man that seems to connect with everyone he meets, Democrat or Republican. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine the parties coming together for really anything, but in 2016, Obama was making comedy videos with some of his former biggest political opponents.
Looking back, I also now understand how consequential it was that Obama was the first Black president in American history. On Monday, an essay was published to this website documenting the life of Martin Luther King Jr., America’s most famous civil rights leader. While MLK Jr. made huge strides towards equality, I don’t think anybody could have realistically imagined that a Black man--let alone a Black man named Barack Hussein Obama--could have won the White House twenty years ago. “One of the reasons why I agreed to support Barack’s run for president was that deep down I was like, ‘there’s no way he’s going to win’,’' Michelle Obama stated in an interview with CNN. Her statement is understandable. After Obama’s presidency, we all know who won the White House. Donald Trump’s time in office was supported by many white nationalist groups and those who do not support Black Lives Matter. In fact, based on what I believe about the current state of racial tension in America, the only real chance to displace Trump from the White House was to have a centralized Democrat like Joe Biden--rather than a progressive like Bernie Sanders--run against him.
Although Obama, just by being Obama, represents a milestone of the racial strife throughout American history, we still--far too often--find it so significant to see a Black man or woman run for office, and even more groundbreaking to see them win. America has been around for 400 years... why was its first Black president elected only twelve years ago? And even while that was the case--a factor that would play into the grief of just about anybody who was the face of such a milestone--Obama remained cool. Obama remained authentic. Obama remained, above all else, himself.
While the exact opposite of Obama was elected right after him, Obama's message of hope and courage against oppression, inequity, and inequality remains--even if it feels as if it is far gone in many aspects of our lives. The fact that a man with the middle name Hussein was elected president only seven years after 9/11, an American tragedy that brought so many hate crimes and harassment towards many Muslim Americans and diverse Americans in general, proves that America, at its core, is filled with advocates for change.
Obama in Jakarta || Lonely Planet
A Promised Land || Barack Obama
Barack Obama || Britannica
Obama: From Promise to Power || David Mendell
Developing Communities Project || The Chicago Community Trust
Barack Obama: Life Before the Presidency || UVA | Miller Center
How Barack Proposed To Michelle Obama || The Late Show with Stephen Colbert | YouTube
Barack Obama || History.com
Obama’s 2009 Recovery Act Kicked Off Over 10 Years Of Economic Growth || Forbes
FACT SHEET: Obama Administration’s Record and the LGBT Community || Obama White House Archives
Obama: Supreme Court Same-Sex Marriage Ruling ‘A Victory For America’ || NPR
GOP leader’s top goal: Make Obama 1-term president || NBC News
Mitch McConnell under fire for saying top priority is making Obama one-term president || Tevi Troy
How Donald Trump Perpetuated the ‘Birther’ Movement for Years || abc News
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