Law career

It was during this time that Barack Obama, who said he was not raised in a religious household, joined the Trinity United Church of Christ. He also visited relatives in Kenya, which included an emotional visit to the graves of his biological father and paternal grandfather. For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept, Obama said. I saw that my life in America the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I felt as a boy, the frustration and hope Id witnessed in Chicago all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away.

Obama returned from Kenya with a sense of renewal, entering Harvard Law School in 1988. The next year, he met Michelle Robinson, an associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin. She was assigned to be Obamas adviser during a summer internship at the firm, and not long after, the couple began dating. Their first kiss took place outside of a Chicago shopping center where a plaque featuring a photo of the couple kissing was installed more than two decades later, in August 2012. In February 1990, Obama was elected the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He graduated from Harvard, magna cum laude, in 1991.

After law school, Obama returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer, joining the firm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland. He also taught part time at the University of Chicago Law School (1992 2004) first as a lecturer and then as a professor and helped organize voter registration drives during Bill Clintons 1992 presidential campaign. On October 3, 1992, he and Michelle were married. They moved to Kenwood, on Chicagos South Side, and welcomed two daughters several years later: Malia (born 1998) and Sasha (born 2001).