Barack Hussein Obama

Barack Hussein Obama , 1961-, American political leader, U.S. senator from Illinois (2005-), b. Honolulu, grad. Columbia (B.A. 1983), Harvard Law School (J.D. 1991). His father, a Kenyan economist, and his mother, a Kansas native, were divorced when he was two, and he spent his early childhood in Indonesia. Soon after law school, he moved to Chicago, where he practiced civil-rights law, lectured on constitutional law at the Univ. of Chicago, and was active in the Democratic party. He was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996, serving until he won (2004) a U.S. Senate seat. Hailed as a young Democratic star, he electrified the 2004 Democratic convention with his keynote address. He became (Feb., 2007) a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, ultimately securing a delegate majority after a prolonged primary contest with Senator Hillary Clinton . The first African American to be nominated for president by a major U.S. political party, he chose Senator Joseph Biden as his running mate, and they subsequently defeated the Republican ticket of Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin . Obama, who led the Democratic party to its largest national victory since the election of Jimmy Carter as president, became the first African American to be elected to the office. Obama has written Dreams of My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006).