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Known as The Windy City, Chicago as the home of Barack Obama before he rose to fame to become the president of the United States. Also, it is the city where he met his life partner, and first lady, Michelle Obama.
Photo: Getty Images
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After coming and going in various cities of the United States, Obama moved to Chicago in the 1980s, specifically to Atgeld Gardens in the Southeast.
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Located in an industrial part of the city full of abandoned warehouses, Altgeld Gardens is a complex with 1,500 single unit homes that looks tranquil but is truly overrun with poverty and violence.
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It was here that Obama was a social worker, then a professor and public defender before jumping to politics in 1997 when he became a senator in Illinois.
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In his arrival to the neighborhood, the president championed a battle to eliminate asbestos in the area, an experience he recounts in his autobiography, Dreams from my Father,.
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His neighbors, like 56-year old African-American veteran, Jimmy Schaffer, said they remember the Young man fondly as the grandmothers of Altgeld Gardens tried to fatten him up with cookies.
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Those in the neighborhood also remember how the President met with neighbors to talk about the public education in the area and issues to do with toxic residue. That is Obamas great legacy in the zone.
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With his social work in Chicago he won little more than $10,000 annually, enough to buy a modest Honda.
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After graduation from Harvard Law School, he took classes in constitutional law at the University of Chicago.
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The president worked in the firm of Sidley Austin in Chicago, where he met Michelle Robinson, whom he married in 1992. In one of their first dates they watches Spike Lees Do the Right Thing.
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Today as president of the United States he prepares to enter his second term after winning the electoral vote on November 6.
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Known as The Windy City, Chicago as the home of Barack Obama before he rose to fame to become the president of the United States. Also, it is the city where he met his life partner, and first lady, Michelle Obama.
Photo: Getty Images
