Obama spent most of his childhood years in Honolulu, where his mother attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa. As a young adult, Obama moved to the contiguous United States, where he was educated at Occidental College, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School. Barack Hussein Obama II, born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961, at the old Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital at 1611 Bingham Street. In mid-1971, Obama moved back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents and attend Punahou School starting in fifth grade. Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles in 1979, where he studied at Occidental College for two years. On February 18, 1981, he made his first public speech, calling for Occidental's divestment from South Africa.

Obama directed Illinois Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive, officially nonpartisan, that helped Carol Moseley Braun become the first black woman ever elected to the Senate. In 1993 Obama joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 12-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license becoming inactive in 2007. Obama was a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in early 1993.