Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th President of the United States of America and the first African American to have held the post. He was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham. His parents separated when he was an infant and divorced when he was 2 years old, after which Obama Sr. returned to Kenya. Obama admitted to a feeling of loss and confusion at the absence of his father as well as an identity crisis about being a black child in predominantly white surroundings. Obama Sr. was killed in a tragic car accident in Nairobi in 1982 when Obama was 21 years old. Ann moved to Indonesia and remarried, and Obama has a half sister named Maya Soetoro Ng fom his mother’s second marriage. He was sent back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents while his mother and sister lived in Jakarta. He enrolled at Punahou Academy and graduated with academic honors.

After high school, Obama studied at Occidental College in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia University in New York. He graduated from Columbia in 1983 with a degree in political science. After a brief stint in the business sector, he moved to Chicago in 1985 to work as a community organizer for low-income residents. During this time, he visited his father and grandfather’s graves in Kenya and upon his return, entered Harvard Law School in 1988. he met his future wife, Michelle Robinson, while working as an associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin when she was assigned to be his adviser during her summer internship at the firm. At Harvard, Obama was the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude in 1991. He then returned to Chicago to practice civil law at the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland, while also teaching part time at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992-2004. He married Michelle in 1992 and have two daughters named Malia and Sasha.

Obama published his autobiography in 1995, titled “Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and