In depth into Barack Obama

Barack Obama, the recently elected senator from Illinois, is one of the most politically powerful blacks today. Obama was born in 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to a Kenyan father and a white American mother, Ann Dunham. Dunham is a descendant of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America in the 1860s. After graduating from high school, Obama moved to New York City and attended Columbia University.He later moved to Chicago and organized a community housing project there. Obama studied at Harvard Law School, graduated Magna Cum Laude and became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. He then moved back to Chicago and organized a large voter registration drive which helped to elect Bill Clinton as President and Carol Moseley Braun as a senator. He then became a professor at the University of Chicago, where he taught until his election as senator.

Obama was a virtually unknown candidate during the early Illinois senatorial race, but eventually, Obama became the Keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention. His electrifying speech helped gain him recognition in the political arena, and he was elected senator by one of the largest margins in state history, winning 72 percent of the popular vote.

Obama has already become one of the most influential members of the Democratic Party and is seen as a prime candidate for the presidential nomination in 2008. Obama has already broken through traditional roles for black political leaders by stressing the need to live in a country not separated by ethic or racial boundaries.