5 Amazing Firsts Accomplished by Barack Obama

In honor of Black History Month and Presidents Day, here are 6 accomplishments that Barack Obama was the first to achieve.

1. Barack Obama is the first president born in Hawaii.
2. Obama was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.
3. When Obama turned down public financing in June 2008, he became the first major-party presidential candidate to turn it down since it was first implemented in 1976.
4. On September 24, 2009, Obama chaired a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, becoming the first sitting U.S. President in history to do so. The result of the meeting? UNSC Resolution 1887, which lays the groundwork for a world without nuclear weapons and probably helped to solidify Obama as the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
5. Barack Obama is the first U.S. President to acknowledge and embrace his African heritage, but he is not America’s first black president. In fact, there is strong evidence that suggests that based on the one-drop rule, the following presidents were black:
   • Thomas Jefferson
   • Andrew Jackson
   • Abraham Lincoln
   • Warren Harding
   • Calvin Coolidge
   • Dwight Eisenhower

Bonus: When Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, he made her the first hispanic Supreme Court nominee in U.S. history.

For even more facts about Barack Obama, check out his book Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance:

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