George Washington John Adams Thomas Jefferson James Madison James Monroe John Quincy Adams Barack Obama 44th President of the United States Andrew Jackson Martin Van Buren William Henry Harrison John Tyler James Polk Zachary Taylor Millard Fillmore Franklin Pierce James Buchanan Abraham Lincoln Andrew Johnson Ulysses S. Grant Rutherford B. Hayes James Garfield Chester Arthur Grover Cleveland Benjamin Harrison William McKinley Theodore Roosevelt William Taft Woodrow Wilson Warren G. Harding Calvin Coolidge Herbert Hoover Franklin D. Roosevelt Harry Truman Dwight Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Johnson Richard Nixon Gerald Ford Jimmy Carter Ronald Reagan George H.W. Bush William J. Clinton George Walker Bush United States Department of State / Bureau3 of International Information Programs Barack Obama In His Own Words 44th President of the United States In this excerpt from one of his speeches, Barack spired by stories of the Civil Rights Movement Obama talks about a time in his life when he and JFK’s [President John F. Kennedy’s] call to “began to notice a world beyond myself ” and service, but when I got to the South Side, there about his desire to be an agent of change. These were no marches, and no soaring speeches. In remarks were made in a commencement ad- the shadow of an empty steel plant, there were dress at Wesleyan University, Middletown, just a lot of folks who were struggling. And we didn’t get very far at first. Connecticut, May 25, 2008. I still remember one of the very first meet- became active in the movement to op- ings we put together to discuss gang violence pose the apartheid regime of South Af- with a group of community leaders. We waited rica. I began following the debates in and waited for people to show up, and finally, this country about poverty and health a group of older people walked into the hall. care. So that by the time I graduated And they sat down. And a little old lady raised from college, I was possessed with a crazy idea I her hand and asked, “Is this where the bingo — that I would work at a grassroots level to game is?” bring about change. It wasn’t easy, but eventually, we made prog- I wrote letters to every organization in the ress. Day by day, block by block, we brought country I could think of. And one day, a small the community together, and registered new group of churches on the South Side of Chi- voters, and set up after-school programs, and cago offered me a job to come work as a com- fought for new jobs, and helped people live munity organizer in neighborhoods that had lives with some measure of dignity. been devastated by steel plant closings. My mother and grandparents wanted me to go to But I also began to realize that I wasn’t just law school. My friends were applying to jobs helping other people. Through service, I found on Wall Street. Meanwhile, this organization a community that embraced me; citizenship offered me $12,000 a year plus $2,000 for an that was meaningful; the direction I’d been Contents old, beat-up car. And I said yes. seeking. Through service, I discovered how Barack Obama ~ An American Life .......................................... 2 my own improbable story fit into the larger Barack Obama’s Vision for the Future ....................................... 10 Now, I didn’t know a soul in Chicago, and I story of America. wasn’t sure what this community organizing Meet the Obama Family ........................................................... 12 business was all about. I had always been in- Vice President Joseph Biden ..................................................... 14 1 Barack Obama ~ An American Life arack Obama’s unique biography presidential election against Republican candi- America,” Obama said in his address to the 2004 Barack Obama Jr. was born in Honolulu. Two and successful campaign for the date Senator John McCain. Democratic National Convention. “There’s not years later the senior Obama left his new family, U.S. presidency have opened a a black America and white America and Latino first for graduate study at Harvard and then for new chapter in U.S. politics. With a polished speaking style, a command of America and Asian America; there’s the United a job as a government economist back in Kenya. eloquent and uplifting rhetoric, the ability to States of America. … We are one people, all of The young Obama met his father again only BPresident Obama, the first African-American inspire the enthusiasm of young voters, and the us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all once, at age 10. president of the United States, brings a life story sophisticated use of the Internet as a campaign of us defending the United States of America.” unlike that of any previous U.S. leader. The bi- tool, Obama was very much a 21st-century can- hen Obama was six, his mother remar- racial son of a Kenyan father and a white mother didate. In his campaign, Obama stressed two The Early Years Wried, this time to an Indonesian oil ex- from the American heartland, Obama shot to overarching themes: changing Washington’s tra- ecutive. The family moved to Indonesia, and national prominence with a well-received keynote ditional way of conducting the nation’s business Obama’s parents came from vastly different Obama spent four years attending school in the speech at the Democratic National Convention and invoking Americans of diverse ideological, backgrounds. His mother, Ann Dunham, was capital city of Jakarta. He eventually returned to in 2004, the same year he was elected to the U.S. social, and racial backgrounds to unite for the born and raised in small-town Kansas. After her Hawaii and went to high school there while liv- Senate from the state of Illinois. Just four years common good. family moved to the Hawaiian Islands, she met ing with his maternal grandparents. later, he rose to the top of a field crowded with Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan scholarship stu- Democratic heavyweights to clinch his party’s “There’s not a liberal America and a conser- dent enrolled at the University of Hawaii. The In his first book, Dreams from My Father, Obama nomination for the White House and win the vative America — there’s the United States of two married in 1959, and on August 4, 1961, describes this period of his life as having more Young Barack with his mother, Nine-year-old Barack in Indonesia with his Barack, age 10, and his Kenyan Barack Obama, center, on his school’s Celebrating his high school graduation with As a college student at Co- Ann Dunham, circa 1963. mother; stepather Lolo Soetoro; and half father, Barack Obama Sr. junior varsity basketball team in grandparents Madelyn Payne and Stanley lumbia University in New York, sister Maya. Hawaii, 1977. Armour Dunham in Hawaii, 1979. circa1983. 2 3 than the usual share of adolescent turmoil, as he ated from college, I was possessed with a crazy this work, giving South Side residents a voice Chicago, where he practiced civil rights law and struggled to make sense of a biracial heritage idea — that I would work at a grassroots level to in such issues as economic redevelopment, job taught constitutional law at the University of then still relatively uncommon in the United bring about change.” training, and environmental clean-up efforts. Chicago. In 1992 he married Michelle Robinson, States. Being rooted in both black culture and He viewed his primary role as a community or- another Harvard Law graduate, and worked on white culture may have helped give Obama the Called to Public Service ganizer, however, as that of a catalyst mobilizing voter registration in Chicago to help Democratic expansive vision he brought to politics years lat- ordinary citizens in a bottom-up effort to forge candidates such as Bill Clinton. er, one that understands many points of view. In search of his identity and a purposeful direc- indigenous strategies for political and economic tion in life, Obama subsequently left his job as empowerment. With a continuing strong commitment to public “Barack has an incredible ability to synthesize a financial writer with an international consult- service, Obama decided to make his first run at seemingly contradictory realities and make them ing firm in New York and headed to Chicago fter three years of such work, Obama con- elective office in 1996, winning a seat from Chi- coherent,” his law school classmate Cassandra in 1985. There, he worked as a community or- Acluded that to bring about true improve- cago in the Illinois state senate. In many ways Butts told New Yorker magazine writer Larissa ganizer for a coalition of local churches on the ment in such distressed communities required the race was a logical progression of his earlier MacFarquhar. “It comes from going from a home city’s South Side, a poor African-American area involvement at a higher level, in the realm of work as a community organizer, and Obama where white people are nurturing you, and then hard hit by the transition from a manufacturing law and politics. Accordingly, he attended Har- brought much of that same expansive outlook you go out into the world and you’re seen as a center to a service-based economy. vard Law School, where he distinguished him- — the politician as an enabler of citizen-directed black person.” self by being elected the first black president of grassroots efforts and a builder of broad-based “It was in these neighborhoods that I received the prestigious Harvard Law Review and gradu- coalitions — to his vision of politics.