The student years

Finally based in America, Obama transferred to New York to study political science at Columbia University. In 1982, he received news of his fathers death in a car accident in Africa. After over a year in the corporate sector, in 1985, Obama moved to Chicago and did three years as a community organiser. In a place devastated by steel plant closures, he represented the unemployed and homeless. And every year there, he saw how gun violence cost the lives of scores of children and hundreds of others.It was there that he attended a sermon by the radical Reverend Jeremiah Wright. It caused him to weep. (Entitled The Audacity to Hope, he adapted it for his breakthrough speech at the Democratic Convention and for his second book.) At the time, Obama seriously considered becoming a preacher.

Instead, he went to Harvard Law School. He hoped it would enable him to achieve the things that grass roots activism couldnt. Before beginning his studies, he went to Kenya to meet his fathers family and better understand his African heritage. Back in America, in 1988 he met his future wife Michelle Robinson, at that time an attorney. A descendent of slaves, she was immersed in the issue of race. And as her best friend was the daughter of the civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, she could introduce Barack to the Democratic political classes.