A few notable facts about Obama are that he is the first African-American president, and also the first to be born outside of the continental United States.
After his parents separated, Obama moved with his mother to Jakarta, Indonesia in the late 1960s, where she worked at the US embassy. He moved back to Hawaii in 1970 to live with his grandparents and attend school. In 1983, he graduated from Columbia University with a degree in political science.
After college, Obama moved to Chicago and for the next several years, he worked with low-income residents in the community, calling the experiment "the best education I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School," (where he entered in 1988.)
In 1996, Obama launched his political career, and won the election to the Illinois State Senate as a Democrat. During this time, he continued to build support among both Democrats and Republicans with legislation on ethics and health care reform. He was re-elected in 1998 and again in 2002, although he ran unsuccessfully in the 2000 Democratic primary for the US House of Representatives. He bounced back from that loss in 2004, and became the third African American elected to the US Senate since Reconstructed.
On February 10, 2007, Obama formally announced his candidacy for president, running for the Democratic nomination against then senator Hillary Clinton. He won the nomination in early June 2008 and chose Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate, a US senator from Delaware since 1972.
On November 4, 2008, the historic turnout at the polls proved victory for Barack Obama and he became the 44th President of the United States. In 2013, Obama would be re-elected for President. Obama's presidency was a game changer in the racial history of the US, and our current political climate continues to combat that.
