Barack Obama through the years

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) waves to spectators as he arrives to announce his candidacy for president in Springfield, Ill. (

Barack Obama claps hands with his grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, at his father's house in Nyongoma Kogelo village in western Kenya in 2006. (Sayyid Azim / Associated Press)

Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in his Capitol Hill Senate office in Washington in 2005 near a painting of the first African American Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall.

In what some people called "the Speech," Barack Obama addresses delegates during the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Four months after the convention, Obama won a U.S. Senate seat in a landslide.

Barack Obama holds daughter Malia, 6, and wife Michelle holds daughter Sasha, 3, after Obama was elected to the Senate in 2004.

As the Democratic nominee for Senate, Barack Obama reads through his keynote address that he is to deliver to the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

Barack Obama and his bride Michelle Robinson, a fellow Harvard Law School graduate, on their wedding day Oct. 18, 1992.

Barack Obama teaching at the University of Chicago Law School. After Harvard, Obama returned to Chicago, joined a small civil rights firm, ran a voter registration drive, and lectured on constitutional law.

Barack Obama as a student at Harvard Law School. He became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, of which he is holding a copy.

An undated photograph shows Barack Obama in New York City while a student at Columbia University, where Obama received a bachelor's degree.

Obama with grandparents Madelyn and Stanley Dunham at his high school graduation in 1979.

Obama in 1977 with the junior varsity basketball team at the Punahou School in Hawaii. During his senior year, the varsity team won the state championship.

A 1976 photo shows Obama, in front row, fourth from right, with his ninth-grade class at the Punahou School in Honolulu.

A 1972 photo shows Barack Obama, in back row, third from left, with his fifth-grade class at Punahou Elementary School, a prestigious private school in Honolulu that attracted the island's wealthiest and most accomplished students.

Obama, 10, with his father, Barack Obama Sr. His father left the family to study at Harvard University when Barack was 2.

Obama, 9, right, with his mother, his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, and his half-sister, Maya Soetoro, in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Obama Family Photo

Obama in Hawaii in the early 1960s.

Barack Obama with his mother, Ann Dunham, who met Obama's father when they were both students at the University of Hawaii. They were married in 1960.

A photograph of Barack Obama Sr., the father of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, on the wall of Obama's grandmother's house in the village of Kogelo, Kenya, near the shores of Lake Victoria.

An undated photo provided by the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama shows his maternal grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, in Massachusetts during World War II.