Who was the first African American President?

Barack Obama was the first African American President of the United States, serving two terms from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2017. Obama was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii to a Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr., and an American mother from Kansas, Stanley Ann Dunham. He grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, attended Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School, where he became the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990.

He worked as a community organizer in Chicago, taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, served three terms in the Illinois state senate from 1997 to 2004, and won election to the United States Senate from Illinois in 2004 by a landslide. His electrifying keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention made him a national figure. He announced his presidential campaign in February 2007 and defeated Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008 in one of the longest and closest primaries in American history.

He defeated Republican Senator John McCain in the November 2008 general election by 365 electoral votes to 173, becoming the first African American elected president and the first president born in Hawaii. He was reelected over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in 2012 by 332 electoral votes to 206.

As president, Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on February 17, 2009, a 787 billion dollar stimulus that helped end the Great Recession. He signed the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, on March 23, 2010, expanding health insurance to about 20 million additional Americans. He ordered the May 2, 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

He nominated Justices Sonia Sotomayor in 2009, the first Latina on the Supreme Court, and Elena Kagan in 2010. He authorized military operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria starting in 2014, signed the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015, and reopened diplomatic relations with Cuba in 2015. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 9, 2009, an honor he said he did not deserve.

After leaving office, Obama and his wife Michelle founded the Obama Foundation. He remains an active voice in Democratic politics and a widely admired American figure.