What determines if a person is black or of African descent? In the 19th and 20th centuries, the standard for determining one’s race was, one drop of black blood, made you black, socially and in the eyes of the law. So by that standard, it would appear some U.S. presidents would have been considered black or mullatto.
Mulatto (-noun 1. the offspring of one white parent and one black parent: not in technical use. 2. a person whose ancestry is a mixture of Negro and Caucasian. adjective 3. of a light-brown color.
historians and authors.
renowned African-American historian J. A. Rogers, author of the “Five Black Presidents” wrote that Andrew Jackson Sr. died before his son, President Andrew Jackson Jr., was born. The president’s mother then went to live on the Crawford farm, where there were Negro slaves and one of these men was Andrew Jr.’s father, Rogers wrote.
Vaughn cites an article written in The Virginia Magazine of History that Jackson was the son of an Irish woman who married a black man. The magazine also stated that
Jackson’s oldest brother had been sold as a slave.
Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s 16th president, served between 1861 and 1865. Author Vaughn, states
Lincoln had very dark skin and coarse hair and his mother allegedly came from an Ethiopian tribe. His heritage fueled so much controversy that Lincoln was nicknamed
“Abraham Africanus the First” by his presidential opponents and cartoons were drawn depicting him as a Negro.
In a book, titled “The Hidden Lincoln” written by William
Herndon, Lincoln’s law-office partner, said that Lincoln’s father of record, Thomas Lincoln, could not have been Lincoln’s father because he was sterile from childhood
mumps and later was castrated.
professor of economics and politics at Wooster College in Ohio, wrote a book on the Harding family genealogy. Evidently, Harding had black ancestors between both sets
of parents. Chancellor also said that Harding attended Iberia College, a school founded to educate fugitive slaves. Professor Chancellor says the Justice Department agents
allegedly bought and destroyed all copies of this book.
Harding suffered nervous breakdowns at the age of 24 and had to spend some time in a sanitarium. Between 1889 and 1901, Harding paid five “protracted” visits to the J.P. Kellogg sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan “to recover from fatigue, overstrain, and nervous illnesses.” Some speculate his illness was due to the pressure of not fully disclosing his black heritage and living as “white”.
Calvin Coolidge, the nation’s 30th president, served between 1923 and 1929 and supposedly was proud of
his heritage. He claimed his mother was dark because of mixed Indian ancestry. This notion was disputed
by Auset Bakhufu, author of “The Six Black Presidents” who said in her book that by the 1800s, the New England Indians hardly were pure Indian, because they had mixed so often with blacks. Coolidge’s mother’s maiden name was “Moor”
and in Europe the name “Moor” was given to all blacks just as “Negro” was used in America. It later was concluded that Coolidge was part black.
The last elected “black” president was Dwight David Eisenhower who served from 1953 to 1961, the
34th president. Eisenhower’s mother, Ida Elizabeth Stover was a mullato woman making Eisenhower part black.
Eisenhower as president moved military integration from a law to reality. He battered Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus with federal force to desegregate Little Rock’s Central
High School. He was the first President to elevate an African-
American to an executive position in the White House. He established the first regulations to prohibit racial discrimination in the federal workforce. He was the first President since Reconstruction to meet with Civil Rights leaders in the White House. He helped turn Washington, D.C., into an integrated city.
Another excellent source of reading on the "Six Black Presidents" is an article titled: "Racial Heritage of Six Former Presidents Questioned" by Monica Haynes, staff reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, dated February 5, 2008.
Blogger Black Buzz states that John Hanson, the first president of the country under the Articles of Confederation was a Moor/Black. He is also ignored and relegated to an obscure footnote in the annals of American history. George Washington was the first president of the country under the U.S. Consititution.
Warren G. Harding's sister taught in a Black segregated school in segregated Washington, D.C. for all her life and she never married. Harding's sister loved the students under her charge and inspired and motivated them to be all that they could be in the post Plessey/Jim Crow era. Records show that she was rather fair skin with semi-kinky hair. It has been reported that some of Mr. Harding's relatives are very well aware of the fact that their great grandfather had Black ancestors.
The Hardings, like many Blacks of that era, passed for White because of the brutal, harsh, cruel, inhumane and ungodly treatment that people of color suffered at that time. My Mother's great uncle, Kit Gady who was from the Pee Dee River area of South Carolina and who was a Cherokee Indian, married a White lady by the name of Della. Della was born in 1877. To this union were born four children, Thomas, Ben, Jewel and Kate. When they were contacted for attendance for the family reunion in 1980, they responded that they did not want to be bothered because they had crossed over into the White race. This part of the family settled in Savannah, Atlanta and various parts of North and South Carolina.
The miscegenation that has taken place in the United States and throughout the Americas is beyond our comprehension.