MAIN People in the News Barack Obama

A major presidential hopeful following his official announcement in 2007, Illinois senator Barack Obama is generating enormous nationwide buzz for his quite possibly becoming the first African American president in U.S. history.

Currently the only African American serving in the Senate, Obama first came to national prominence with a stirring speech at the Democratic Naitonal Convention in 2004, in which he called for an end to polarization along party lines, saying,"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America."

Obama's appeals for both national unification and international diplomacy make the attractive and charismatic orator the most popular grass-roots presidential candidate in a generation, say political pundits.

In the recent past, he has attracted thousands of residents from local U.S. communities on the campaign trail, and currently leads in delegates in the Democratic primary. He also has two books on the bestseller list, "Dreams of My Father" (a 1995 memoir) and "The Audacity of Hope : Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" published in 2006.

Barack Obama Bios, News & Pictures | Barack Obama Quotes

Barack Hussein Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to a Kenyan father and white Kansas-born mother. He later graduated from the local Punahou School before embarking on a political science degree at Columbia University.

Moving to Chicago, where he helped organize local job training programs in poor neighborhoods, Obama decided to return to school to pursue a law degree at Harvard, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, graduating magna cum laude in 1991.

His career in law began with a return to Chicago, working as a civil rights lawyer, then as a teacher of constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

Barack Obama first entered politics several years before, having run his first successful campaign to the Illinois state senate in 1996. Four years later, he made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. House of Representatives, but rebounded with reelection to the state senate in 2002, running unopposed.

It was in 2004 while running for an open seat in the U.S. Senate when Obama delivered the famous "Audacity of Hope" keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, and overnight became a national political figure. His subsequent landslide victory in November set the stage for a presidential run.

Obama formally announced his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election in Springfield, Illinois, on February 10, 2007. Currently, he leads in number of delegates over Hillary Clinton.

Most recently, he candidly touched on black-white race relations in America during a speech in on March 18 in response to statement made by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who stirred a controversy over his remarks about white Americans.

Barack Obama has been married to Michelle Robinson since 1992 and together they have two daughters, Malia (born 1999) and Sasha (born 2001).

Related Web Sites:

Barack Obama.com

Barack Obama Speeches

Barack Obama - Wikipedia

THE CANDIDATE - New Yorker magazine profile

BBC Profile : Barack Obama

Rolling Stone - Campaign '08 : The Radical Roots of Barack Obama

Famous Quotes:

• "We live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained."

• "We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

• "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America and latino America and asian America - there's the United States of America."

• "As Americans, we can take enormous pride in the fact that courage has been inspired by our own struggle for freedom, by the tradition of democratic law secured by our forefathers and enshrined in our Constitution. It is a tradition that says all men are created equal under the law and that no one is above it."

• "What Washington needs is adult supervision."