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Barack Obama defies the statistical norms for black male youths in this country. Born to a white mother and an African father who met and married while at the University of Hawaii, his life very well could have turned out one-hundred-eighty degrees differently. As a bi-racial child whose parents divorced when he was just two years old, the deck of life could have been greatly stacked against him. Thankfully, it was not, and he is now poised to possibly become the first black President in our country's history.

Born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, he lived in Hawaii until he was six years old. His mother had remarried to a man from Indonesia, and from the ages six through ten, Barack attended school in Jakarta, taking classes taught only in Indonesian. At age ten he returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents and graduated from high school there in 1979.

After the divorce his father had gone to Harvard to obtain his PhD, but then returned to Kenya. He was killed there in an automobile accident in 1982. Barack only saw his father once, briefly, in 1971, and struggled with his racial identity as a child being raised in a white family with a black father. As he noted in his 1995 memoir "Dreams of My Father", he used alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine during his teenage years to try to come to terms with who he was. His mother died in 1995, shortly after the book was published, of ovarian cancer.

After graduating from high school he attended Occidentel College in Los Angeles for two years before transferring to Columbia University. At Columbia he majored in political science and international relations, and graduated in 1983. After working for awhile as a community organizer in Chicago, he entered Harvard Law School in 1988 and was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduation in 1991 he returned to Chicago, working as an attorney representing discrimination claims and voting rights issues while also lecturing on constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He held that position until his election to the Senate in 2004.

He also served in the Illinois state senate from 1996 until 2003, when he resigned to run for the US Senate.

His keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention helped propel him to national attention when he spoke of the need to "see that every child in America has a decent shot in life" and that we should never go to war "without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world".

Since being elected to the Senate he has worked on or introduced legislation pertaining to border security among others, and co-sponsored the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act, which authorized creation of a Web site, USAspending.gov, which gives a breakdown of all organizations that receive Federal funding and the agency from which the funds are allocated. He has also been a very vocal opponent to the war in Iraq.

Because of the fact he is considered to be the first viable black candidate to run for the Presidency, concerns for his safety prompted Secret Service protection to be given to him for the 18 months prior to the national election.

Senator Barack Obama has overcome what could have been insurmountable odds in his life to become the man that he is today: a man who cares about the poor, a man who empathizes with the working class, a man who has deep beliefs in the system, and a man who also happens to be black.

Learn more about this author, JoAnn Powell.
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