Barack Obama: African-American

01VOA Learning English presents America's Presidents.

02Today we are talking about Barack Obama.

03He first took office in 2009 and was re-elected in 2012.

04Because his presidency is so recent, this program will not try to offer a historical perspective.

05But one part of his legacy is already clear.

06Obama is the United States' first African American president.

07His father was a black man from Kenya.

08His mother was a white American from the Midwestern state of Kansas.

09For many Americans, Obama's presidency was an important symbol in a country that permitted black people to be enslaved.

10And even after the U.S.

11Constitution officially banned slavery in 1865, African Americans have been extremely underrepresented in the U.S.

12government.

13By 2009, only five African Americans had ever served in the U.S.

14Senate, and Obama was one of them.

15Even many people who did not vote for Obama said his election to the country's highest office made them proud or hopeful.

16A public opinion survey immediately after Election Day found that two-thirds of Americans believed that the country's racial conflicts could be resolved.

17Obama's parents met as students at the University of Hawaii.

18His father had won a scholarship to study economics.

19His mother's high school.

20His mother went on to earn a degree in math there, as well as a graduate degree.

21The two married and had a son, whom they named after his father, Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.

22But the couple soon separated.

23The older Barack Obama returned to Kenya, where he later died in a car accident.

24Barack's mother went on to marry another man.

25He was from Indonesia.

26The family moved to Jakarta, and the couple had a daughter named Maya.

27When Barack was 10, his mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with her parents.

28She wanted him to get a good education.

29Barack finished high school in Hawaii, then went on to Occidental College in Los Angeles.

30After two years, he transferred to Columbia University in New York.

31There, he completed a degree in political science.

32But Obama said the best education he received was in one of his first jobs.

33He worked as a community organizer in Chicago.

34He helped people who lived in public housing put pressure on the city government to improve their conditions.

35Obama later said the work showed him how important it was to understand the legal process.

36So he entered Harvard Law School.

37Over the next years, Obama worked as a lawyer, wrote a book about his experience as a person of mixed race, and married Michelle Robinson, a woman he worked with at a law firm.

38She and Barack Obama settled in Chicago and had two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

39When he was in his mid-30s, Obama began his political career.

40He was elected three times to the Illinois State Senate.

41After 10 years there, he won a seat in the U.S.

42Senate in a landslide victory.

43That same year, Obama attended the Democratic National Convention, the meeting where the party officially nominates a presidential candidate.

44Obama was not one of the candidates, but the Democrats asked him to make an important speech.

45In it, Obama famously talked about how his life story was an American story.

46He said he was confident the U.S.

47could overcome its divisions and achieve unity.

48There is not a liberal America and a conservative America, he said.

49There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America.

50There's a United States of America.

51America.

52Only four years later, Obama would be elected its 44th president.

53I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.