The post-election media revelry at the victory of Barack Obama
Layout: Joachim Romeo D'Costa
1982: Barack Obama receives the news of the vehicle-accident death of his 46-year old estranged father in Kenya.
1983: After receiving his B.A. degree in Political Science with specialization in International Relations from the Columbia University, he works at the Business International Corporation and later at the New York Public Interest Research Group.
1985: He takes up a job with the Developing Communities Project, a church-based project in Chicago as a community organizer. In three years, he carried out projects on school reform, hazardous waste cleanup, and helped set up a job training centre, college preparatory tutoring programme, and tenants' rights organization.
1988: Twenty-six -year old Barack Obama goes on a three-week trip to Europe and one-week visit to his late father's relatives in Kenya. This trip helps him understand the situation of his father and the challenges that he faced in Kenya.
He starts his graduate study at the Harvard Law School in Boston.
1989: He meets Michelle Robinson, who later became his wife, in Chicago while doing an internship at a law firm. At the university, he becomes the editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.
1990: Obama is elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.
1991: Obama graduates from Harvard University with a Juris Doctor magna cum laude.
1992: In Chicago, he gets a job with the law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Gallard as a junior lawyer.
Barack Obama and Michelle Robinson marry on October 10 of this year.
He also starts teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. In addition, he becomes the director of Illinois Project Vote, promoting registration of minority voters, mainly in the African-American community.
1995: Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, is published and it receives good reviews.
On November 7 of this year, Obama's mother Ann Dunham dies of ovarian cancer.
1996: Barack Obama runs for and wins the Illinois State Senate seat as the Democratic Party candidate. As the Democrats were a minority in the Senate, his initiatives could not get passed there.
1998: Malia Ann, the first daughter of the Obamas, is born. Barack is also elected to the Illinois Senate for the second time.
1999: Barack Obama runs for the US Congress seat, but loses to his rival, who was an experienced politician. He resumes his work as the Illinois State Senator and succeeds to get 20 pieces of legislation passed in next several years.
2001: Natasha (also called Sasha), the second daughter of the Obamas, is born.
2002: Barack Obama is elected again to the Illinois State Senate.
2004: In November, Barack Obama, at the age of 43, wins the US Senate seat from Illinois .
2006: Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, is published.
2007: On February 10, Obama announces his candidacy for the President of the US in 2008 presidential election.
2008: In June, Barack Obama becomes the nominee of the Democratic Party for the incoming presidential election. On November 4, he defeats the Republican Party candidate John McCain and is elected the 44th President of the US.
2009: On January 20, President-elect Barack Hussein Obama, Jr., the first African-American, is to be officially inaugurated in a ceremony unprecedented in the history of the United States. Millions of people are expected to descend on Washington, DC, to witness this historic event.
P.S. The irony is that President-elect Barack Obama's campaign fodder was the failed policies and actions of the incumbent President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The Chicago Sun Times, through interviews with family members and genealogists, and a study of archives and records, and facts in Obama's book, Dreams from My Father, found that through his white mother's side, Barack Obama is related to Dick Cheney. They are ninth cousins once removed having the common ancestor, Mareen Duvall, a 17th century Huguenot who moved to the US from France.
Barack Obama is also related to the present President George W. Bush. They are 11th cousins, having the same 17th century ancestors, Samuel and Sarah Soole Hinckley, in Massachusetts.
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