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Barack Obama's Early Life Overview

Barack Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and American mother. His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii, where his father was a foreign student. Obama's father later earned degrees from the University of Hawaii and Harvard but returned to Kenya in 1964. Obama's parents divorced that year. In 1963, his mother met an Indonesian man who she married in 1965. Obama, his mother, and stepfather moved to Indonesia in 1967 where Obama attended local schools for several years in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

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51 views3 pages

Barack Obama's Early Life Overview

Barack Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and American mother. His parents met while attending the University of Hawaii, where his father was a foreign student. Obama's father later earned degrees from the University of Hawaii and Harvard but returned to Kenya in 1964. Obama's parents divorced that year. In 1963, his mother met an Indonesian man who she married in 1965. Obama, his mother, and stepfather moved to Indonesia in 1967 where Obama attended local schools for several years in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

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Early life and career

Main article: Early life and career of Barack


Obama
Obama was born on August 4, 1961,[5] at Kapiolani
Medical Center for Women and
Children in Honolulu, Hawaii at 7:24 pm.[6][7][8] He is
the only president born outside the contiguous 48
states.[9] He was born to an American mother of
European descent and an African father. His
mother, Ann Dunham (1942–1995), was born
in Wichita, Kansas; she was mostly of English
descent,[10] with some German, Irish, Scottish,
Swiss, and Welsh ancestry.[11] (In July
2012, [Link] found a strong likelihood that
Stanley Ann Dunham was descended from John
Punch, an enslaved African man who lived in
the Colony of Virginia during the seventeenth
century.[12][13]) His father, Barack Obama Sr. (1936–
1982),[14] was a married[15][16][17] Luo
Kenyan from Nyang'oma Kogelo.[15][18] Obama's
parents met in 1960 in a Russian language class
at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his
father was a foreign student on a scholarship.[19]
[20]
 The couple married in Wailuku, Hawaii, on
February 2, 1961, six months before Obama was
born.[21][22]
In late August 1961, a few weeks after he was
born, Barack and his mother moved to
the University of Washington in Seattle, where
they lived for a year. During that time, the elder
Obama completed his undergraduate degree
in economics in Hawaii, graduating in June 1962.
He left to attend graduate school on a scholarship
at Harvard University, where he earned an M.A. in
economics. Obama's parents divorced in March
1964.[23] Obama Sr. returned to Kenya in 1964,
where he married for a third time and worked for
the Kenyan government as the Senior Economic
Analyst in the Ministry of Finance.[24] He visited his
son in Hawaii only once, at Christmas 1971,
[25]
 before he was killed in an automobile accident in
1982, when Obama was 21 years old.[26] Recalling
his early childhood, Obama said, "That my father
looked nothing like the people around me—that he
was black as pitch, my mother white as milk—
barely registered in my mind."[20] He described his
struggles as a young adult to reconcile social
perceptions of his multiracial heritage.[27]

Obama (right) with his father in Hawaii, 1971


In 1963, Dunham met Lolo Soetoro at
the University of Hawaii; he was
an Indonesian East–West Center graduate
student in geography. The couple married
on Molokai on March 15, 1965.[28] After two one-
year extensions of his J-1 visa, Lolo returned
to Indonesia in 1966. His wife and stepson
followed sixteen months later in 1967. The family
initially lived in the Menteng Dalam neighborhood
in the Tebet sub district of south Jakarta. From
1970, they lived in a wealthier neighborhood in
the Menteng sub district of central Jakarta.[29]

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