BARACK OBAMA

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.
Barack's mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression, and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he marched across Europe in Patton's army. Her mother went to work on a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to Hawaii.
It was there, at the University of Hawaii, where Barack's parents met. His mother was a student there, and his father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams in America.
Learn more about Barack's life, family, and accomplishments.; Barack; Barack Obama; Barack TV; Obama; Speeches; This appears on the "Meet Barack Page" http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid452323111http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=353512430
Function VBGetSwfVer(i)
on error resume next
Dim swControl, swVersion
swVersion = 0
set swControl = CreateObject("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash." + CStr(i))
if (IsObject(swControl)) then
swVersion = swControl.GetVariable("$version")
end if
VBGetSwfVer = swVersion
End Function
On Error Resume Next
Sub flashObj_FSCommand(ByVal command, ByVal args)
Call onFSCommand(command, args)
End Sub
// By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C
// found at http://www.brightcove.com/publishertermsandconditions.html.
var config = new Array();
/*
* feel free to edit these configurations
* to modify the player experience
*/
config["videoId"] = null; //the default video loaded into the player
config["videoRef"] = null; //the default video loaded into the player by ref id specified in console
config["lineupId"] = null; //the default lineup loaded into the player
config["playerTag"] = null; //player tag used for identifying this page in brightcove reporting
config["autoStart"] = false; //tells the player to start playing video on load
config["preloadBackColor"] = "#FFFFFF"; //background color while loading the player
/*
* set the player's size using the parameters below
* to make this player dynamically resizable, set the width and height as a percentage
*/
config["width"] = 275;
config["height"] = 275;

/* do not edit these config items */
config["playerId"] = 452323111;

createExperience(config, 8);
On Error Resume Next
Sub flashObj0_FSCommand(ByVal command, ByVal args)
Call onFSCommand(command, args)
End Sub

Barack's father eventually returned to Kenya, and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.
Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.
The group had some success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.
He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate.