Where is Barack Obama from?

Former president Barack Obama has spoken at the Democratic National Convention 2024 and has shredded Trump to bits. What does this mean? It means he’s back in the public conversation in a big way.

Alongside other influential figures like former president Bill Clinton, Barack Obama was in attendance at the Democratic National Convention, ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential elections. Obama’s DNC speeches have been etched in time immemorial ever since he entered the White House as the first Black president of the United States of America in 2008. Repeating history, he and former First Lady Michelle Obama addressed the convention with their powerful speeches on Aug. 20 this year.

From beginning with “Chicago, it’s good to be home” to the scorching words he had for their Republican rival Donald Trump: “a neighbor who keeps running his leafblower outside your window,” Obama’s speech was met with thunderous applause (via NDTV). The former president also had some kind and praising words for the new Republican presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. He highlighted their similar journeys, saying “Kamala Harris and I build our lives on the same foundation of values.”

The shared values and background Obama talked about are hidden in their origins, both coming from a minority group in the U.S. While Kamala Harris’ Indian origins are known to all now, what about the roots of Barack Obama?

Barack Obama is the only president born outside the contiguous 48 states of the U.S.

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at the Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu, Hawaii, one of the only two non-contiguous states (the other one being Alaska). As the first Black president of the United States, Obama is also the only president to have ancestry from outside Europe. While his mother Ann Dunham was an American born in Wichita, Kansas, with English, Welsh, German, Swiss, and Irish descent, Obama’s paternal family is of Kenyan Luo ancestry.

To dig deeper into it, his father, Barack Obama Sr. was a Luo Kenyan born in Nyang’oma Kogelo, a village in Kenya. He met Ann Dunham in 1960 in a Russian language class at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, where he was a foreign student on a scholarship. After their initial acquaintance turned into a loving relationship, the couple married in Wailuku, Hawaii, on Feb. 2, 1961, six months before their son was born.

The former president has always been vocal about his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage. But since he became POTUS, a lot has changed in the Democrats’ office. As the man himself proclaimed during his Aug. 20 speech, “This convention has always been good to kids with funny names who believe in this country that anything is possible.”