Born Aug. 4, 1961, Obama is a native of Hawaii — the first presidential candidate to come from the 50th state. His mother was a white woman originally from Kansas; his father, a black college scholarship student from Kenya.

His parents were divorced when he was young, and his mother married another foreign student. The family moved to his stepfather's native Indonesia, where Obama spent four years before returning to Hawaii at age 10 to attend a private school on scholarship.

Though his elite education has opened Obama to occasional charges of snobbery, he recalls having been one of the least well-off students in his class, living in an apartment with his grandparents.

Growing up

A popular and successful student, Obama wrote in his 1995 memoir, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," that he nonetheless was troubled by questions of racial identity. He has said his love of basketball emerged in part from the fact that the court, where he was part of a championship high school team, was one place where being black was not a disadvantage.

He also acknowledged that during this period, he used cocaine and marijuana. But he did well enough to win a scholarship to Occidental College in Los Angeles, where he went from being known as "Barry" to his given name and made his first political speech, against South Africa's apartheid system.

Stepping up his academic ambitions, he transferred to New York's Columbia University, where he earned his undergraduate degree in political science. After a stint with a business information company, he took a $10,000-a-year job as a community organizer in Chicago. In a city where black political opportunity was on the rise, Obama cut his teeth on projects such as organizing residents to lobby for a jobs center.

Entering politics

In 1988, he enrolled in Harvard Law School, where he served as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduating magna cum laude in 1991, he returned to Chicago, where he took a job as a civil rights lawyer with a private firm, married his wife, Michelle, and settled in the Hyde Park neighborhood near the University of Chicago. In 1996, he won election to the Illinois Senate.

In 2000, he made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for a U.S. House seat, then became an early opponent of the Iraq war. In 2004, a U.S. Senate seat came open, and Obama won the nomination.

Rising star

The August of his Senate campaign, Obama, now recognized as a rising star in the Democratic Party, was tapped to give the keynote address at the presidential convention. He electrified a national TV audience, and the buzz about him as potential presidential candidate began immediately.

As the campaign opened last January, he knocked longtime front-runner Hillary Clinton off kilter with a win in the Iowa caucuses, but she fought back and the race became a titanic, 50-state struggle between two history makers: Whether the woman or the African-American, the Democrats would have in their presidential candidate a first.

Challenge ahead

For Obama, the race is far from over. He now faces John McCain, a GOP maverick with a very different resume and outlook — particularly on foreign policy and the war in Iraq.

Obama promises to run a campaign aimed at bringing his party, and the country, together.