I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land.
--From Dr Martin Luther King Jr's last speech, made the night before he was assassinated
The US Election: Complete Coverage
Obama supporters in Chicago react after television networks announce his election as America's first black president.
Obama's father was a Kenyan intellectual who fell in love with his white American mother in Hawaii.
Barack Obama, born on August 4, 1961, didn't really know his father; his parents split up when he was a child. His mother, a social activist and a free spirit if there was one, moved to Indonesia where she married again, this time to an Indonesian man.
When he was about ten Barack moved back to Hawaii from Jakarta and was brought up by his mother's white parents till he went to college. He met his father just once before the latter's death in 1982. His mother, who died of ovarian cancer at 53 in 1995, made sure that Barack was always in touch with his African-American roots.
Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: Exclusive: 'With Obama what you see is what you get'
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