Barack Obama on the South Side of Chicago. Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (; born August 4, 1961) is an American attorney and politician who served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American to be elected to the presidency. He previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois (2005–2008). Obama was born in 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii, two years after the territory was admitted to the Union as the 50th state. After graduating from Columbia University in 1983, he worked as a community
Barack Obama 2015, that inmates sentenced in US federal custody declined by 5% under Obama. This is the largest decline in sentenced inmates in US federal custody since Democratic President Jimmy Carter. By contrast, the federal prison population increased significantly under presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. Obama left office in January 2017 with a 60% approval rating. A 2017 C-SPAN "Presidential Historians Survey" ranked Obama as the 12th-best US president. The Barack Obama Presidential Center is Obama's planned presidential library. It will be hosted by the University of Chicago and located in Jackson Park