Washington - Democrat Barack Obama's inauguration Tuesday as the first African-American US president marked a turning point in US history and put into the White House a man who could have gained broader insight from his unusually multicultural background.
Obama's rise from obscure state legislator to the presidency was nothing short of meteoric. In 2004, as the Democratic nominee for a US Senate seat from Illinois, Obama got a coveted opportunity to deliver a prime-time address to the centre-left party's national convention.
In words that would became standard components of his campaign theme of unity, Obama said: 'There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.'
Although party leaders placed him on the podium simply to get more exposure for his successful Senate race, they were bowled over by his ability to command a crowd. Before long, Obama was deployed as a speechmaker on the Democratic fund-raising circuit, cultivating a following of grassroots and insiders alike, who would soon urge him to bid for the presidency as the war in Iraq spiralled out of control.
Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961, son of a black father from Kenya and his Kansas-born white mother, who met at the University of Hawaii. He was to say later that they 'weren't well off or well known, but shared a belief that in America, their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to.'
This lineage helped Obama see the world in both black and white, perspectives that are important in a country where black America and white America are often separate spaces.
His parents separated when he was 2 and were subsequently divorced. His mother remarried and moved to Indonesia, where Obama spent ages 6 through 10. He returned to Hawaii for high school, then went to Columbia University and Harvard law school, where he made headlines as the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review - long a launching pad for high-flying careers in law, finance and politics.
He had earlier worked in Chicago as a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighbourhoods. Back in Chicago practising civil-rights law after Harvard, Obama's advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years.
Obama's ability to smile through adversity has held him in good stead - whether as a child in Indonesia struggling to fit in, an Ivy League graduate working in Chicago's poorest slums, a political novice in the Illinois Senate or the first African-American presidential nominee for a major party.
His eloquence has always won him admirers - even the woman who was to become his wife in 1992, Michelle Obama, who was at first skeptical of the Harvard hotshot who came to intern in her high- powered Chicago law firm.
In early 2007, with mounting US casualties in Iraq eroding Republican fortunes, Obama formed a committee to explore his presidential bid, just days before Senator Hillary Clinton did the same.
For the first time in history, a woman and a black man would battle it out for their party's presidential nomination, a race that went to the bitter end before Obama emerged the winner. Clinton is now his nominee for secretary of state.
In the popular vote in November, Obama garnered 53 per cent of the electorate - more than either of his two-term predecessors, the departing Republican George W Bush or former president Bill Clinton.
His popularity inspired an estimated 1.8 million people to filer through Tuesday's early-morning gloom and stand in sub-freezing weather for hours to witness his inauguration. It also gave him a bully pulpit to start negotiating with Congress over an 825-billion- dollar financial rescue plan, even as he waited for weeks in the wings to become president.
'Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America,' the new president declared in his inaugural speech.
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