Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a black Kenyan father and a white American mother from Kansas, President Elect Barack Obama was raised in Indonesia and then later in Hawaii by his maternal grandparents. But it was in Chicago that he was shaped, both socially and politically, and it is where he still lives today. Chicago is the third largest city in the United States and has one of the largest concentrations of black Americans, most of whom arrived at the beginning of the 20th century, fleeing the racist laws of the South. It is a racially polarised town where whites live largely in the neighbourhoods to the north and blacks to the south, and it was in Chicago's Southside that Barack Obama arrived in 1985. He was twenty-four years old and had just finished his studies in New York. He was searching for a direction in life, and a major historical event had just taken place - Harold Washington had been elected as the first black mayor of Chicago.