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 assassination plot in Denver Barack Obama assassination plot in Denver The Barack Obama assassination plot in Denver refers to an alleged plot by Shawn Robert Adolf, Tharin Robert Gartrell and Nathan Dwaine Johnson to assassinate Barack Obama, then the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nominee. The trio allegedly planned to shoot Senator Obama with a high-powered rifle during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado. The alleged motive for the attempted assassination was a white supremacist belief that an African American should not be elected President of the United States. Gartrell was arrested August 24, 2008, and found to be in possession of rifles and