Early life and career of Barack Obama

Soon after their son's birth, while Obama's father continued his education at the University of Hawaii, Ann Dunham took the infant to

Ann Dunham returned with her son to Honolulu and in January 1963 resumed her undergraduate education at the University of Hawaii.^[10] In January 1964, Dunham filed for divorce, which was not contested.^[6] Barack Obama, Sr. later graduated from Harvard University with an A.M. in economics and in 1965 returned to Kenya.^[11][12][14]

During her first year back at the University of Hawaii, Dunham met Lolo Soetoro.^[15] He was one year into his American experience, after two semesters on the Manoa campus and a summer on the mainland at

Dunham and Soetoro married on March 15, 1965, on Molokai. They returned to Honolulu to live with her son as a family.^[17] After two one-year extensions of his J-1 visa, Soetoro returned to Indonesia on June 20, 1966.^[18] Dunham and her son moved in with her parents at their house. She continued with her studies, earning a B.A. in anthropology in August 1967, while her son attended kindergarten in 1966–1967 at Noelani Elementary School.^[19][20]

In 1967, Obama and his mother moved to

Obama's mother met a transgender person named Evie (who was known as Trudi at the time), at a cocktail party in 1969. Dunham was so impressed by Evie's beef steak and fried rice that she offered her a job in the family home. It did not take long before Evie was also caretaker for then eight-year-old "Barry", as Obama was often referred to as then, and his baby sister Maya. As a caretaker, she also spent time playing with Obama and bringing him to and from school, which she continued to do for about two years.^[26]

In 1970, Soetoro took a new job at higher pay in Union Oil Company's government relations office.^{[4][23][27][28][29][30]} From January 1970 to August 1972, Obama's mother taught English and was a department head and a director of the Institute of Management Education and Development.^[25] Obama attended the Indonesian-language government-run Besuki School, one-and-half miles east in the exclusive Menteng administrative village, for part of 3rd grade and for 4th grade. By this time, he had picked up on some Indonesian in addition to his native English.^[23] He also joined the Cub Scouts.^[31]

In the summer of 1970, Obama returned to Hawaii for an extended visit with his maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham. His mother had also arranged an interview for possible admission to the Punahou School in Honolulu, one of the top private schools in the city.^[32] On August 15, 1970, Dunham and Soetoro celebrated the birth of their daughter, Maya Kassandra Soetoro.^[33]

In mid-1971, Obama moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents and attend Punahou School starting in fifth grade.^[34][35] In December 1971, Obama was visited for a month by his father, Barack Obama Sr., from Kenya. It was the last time Obama would see his father. This was followed by his mother visiting her son and parents in Honolulu from late 1971 to January 1972.

In 1972, Dunham returned to Hawaii, bringing along the young Maya, Obama's half-sister. Dunham started graduate study in anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. From sixth grade through eighth grade at Punahou, Obama lived with his mother and Maya.^[36][37]

Obama's mother completed her coursework at the University of Hawaii for an M.A. in anthropology in December 1974.^[38] After three years in Hawaii, she and Maya returned to Jakarta in August 1975,^[39] where Dunham completed her contract with the Institute of Management Education and Development and started anthropological fieldwork.^[40] Obama chose to stay with his grandparents in Honolulu to continue his studies at Punahou School for his high school years.^[8][41]

In his memoir Obama describes his experiences growing up in his mother's

Education summary

Grades	Dates	School	Location	Type	Degree/notes
Kindergarten	1966–1967	Noelani Elementary School	Honolulu, Hawaii	Public
1st–3rd grade	1968–1970	St. Francis Assisi	Jakarta, Indonesia	Private Catholic
4th grade	1970–1971	State Elementary School Menteng 01	Jakarta, Indonesia	Public
5th–12th grade	1971–1979	Punahou School	Honolulu, Hawaii	Private	High school diploma, 1979[49]
Freshman–Sophomore year	1979–1981	Occidental College	Los Angeles	Private	Transferred to Columbia
Junior–Senior year	1981–1983	Columbia University	New York City	Private	B.A., political science major with international relations and English literature
1L–3L	1988–1991	Harvard Law School	Cambridge, Massachusetts	Private	magna cum laude President, Harvard Law Review

Adult life

College years

Following high school, Obama moved to

Karachi (Pakistan) for three weeks.^[50]

He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a speciality in international relations^[51][52] and in English literature.^[53] Obama lived off campus in a modest rented apartment at 142 West 109th Street.^[54][55] He graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked at Business International Corporation and New York Public Interest Research Group.^[56][57]

Early career in Chicago

After four years living in New York, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a

Altgeld Gardens.^[60] Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute.^[61] In the summer of 1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks then to Kenya for five weeks where he met many of his paternal relatives for the first time.^[62]

Law School

Obama entered

Richard Epstein, who later taught at the University of Chicago Law School when Obama later taught there, said Obama was elected editor "because people on the other side believed he would give them a fair shake."^[59][66]

While in law school he worked as an associate at the law firm

The publicity from his election as the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations.[68] In an effort to recruit him to their faculty, the University of Chicago Law School provided Obama with a fellowship and an office to work on his book.^[68] He originally planned to finish the book in one year, but it took much longer as the book evolved into a personal memoir. In order to work without interruptions, Obama and his wife, Michelle, traveled to Bali where he wrote for several months. The manuscript was finally published as Dreams from My Father in mid-1995.^[68]

He married Michelle in 1992^[69] and settled down with her in Hyde Park, a liberal, integrated, middle-class Chicago neighborhood with a history of electing reform-minded politicians independent of the Daley political machine.^[70] The couple's first daughter, Malia Ann, was born in 1998; their second, Natasha (known as Sasha), in 2001.^[71]

One effect of the marriage was to bring Obama closer to other politically influential Chicagoans. One of Michelle's best friends was

Obama directed Illinois Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive, officially nonpartisan, that helped Carol Moseley Braun become the first black woman ever elected to the Senate.^[59] He headed up a staff of 10 and 700 volunteers that achieved its goal of 400,000 registered African Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.^[72][73][74] Although fundraising was not required for the position when Obama was recruited for the job, he started an active campaign to raise money for the project. According to Sandy Newman, who founded Project Vote, Obama "raised more money than any of our state directors had ever done. He did a great job of enlisting a broad spectrum of organizations and people, including many who did not get along well with one another."^[74]

The fundraising brought Obama into contact with the wealthy, liberal elite of Chicago, some of whom became supporters in his future political career. Through one of them he met

Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years, as a Lecturer for four years (1992–1996), and as a Senior Lecturer for eight years (1996–2004).^[75] During this time he taught courses in due process and equal protection, voting rights, and racism and law. He published no legal scholarship, and turned down tenured positions, but served eight years in the Illinois Senate during his twelve years at the university.^[76]

In 1993 Obama joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 12-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license becoming inactive in 2007.^[56][77] The firm was well known among influential Chicago liberals and leaders of the black community, and the firm's Judson H. Miner, who met with Obama to recruit him before Obama's 1991 graduation from law school, had been counsel to former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, although the law firm often clashed with the administration of Mayor Richard M. Daley. The 29-year-old law student made it clear in his initial interview with Miner that he was more interested in joining the firm to learn about Chicago politics than to practice law.^[70]

During the four years Obama worked as a full-time lawyer at the firm, he was involved in 30 cases and accrued 3,723 billable hours.