From a New York Times article dated 6 April...enjoy!
Will Americans vote for a black president? If the notorious historian William Estabrook Chancellor was right, we already did. In the early 1920s, Chancellor helped assemble a controversial biographical portrait accusing President Warren Harding of covering up his family's colored past. According to the family tree Chancellor created, Harding was actually the great-grandson of a black woman. Under the one-drop rule of American race relations, Chancellor claimed, the country had inadvertently elected its first Negro president. In todays presidential landscape, many Americans view the prospect of a black man in the Oval Office as a sign of progress evidence of a postracial national consciousness. In the white-supremacist heyday of the 1920s (the Ku Klux Klan had a major revival during the Harding years), the taint of Negro blood was political death. The Harding forces hit back hard against Chancellor, driving him out of his job and destroying all but a handful of published copies of his book. In the decades since, many biographers have dismissed the rumors of Hardings mixed-race family as little more than a political scandal and Chancellor himself as a Democratic mudslinger and racist ideologue. But as with the long-denied and now all-but-proved allegations of Thomas Jeffersons affair with his slave Sally Hemings, there is reason to question the denials. From the perspective of 2008, when interracial sex is seen as a historical fact of life instead of an abomination, the circumstantial case for Hardings mixed-race ancestry is intriguing though not definitive. To anyone who tracks it down today, Chancellors book comes across as a laughable partisan screed, an amalgam of bizarre racial theories, outlandish stereotypes and cheap political insults. But it also contains a remarkable trove of social knowledge the kind of community gossip and oral tradition that rarely appears in official records but often provides clues to richer truths. When he toured Ohio in 1920, Chancellor claimed to find dozens of acquaintances and neighbors willing to swear that the Hardings had been considered black for generations. Among the persuaded, according to rumor, was Hardings father-in-law, Amos Kling, one of the richest men in Hardings adopted hometown of Marion. When Harding married his daughter, Florence, in 1891, Kling supposedly denounced her for polluting the family line. There were rumors of other family scandals as well: the 1849 case in which one David Butler killed Amos Smith after Smith claimed that Butlers wife, a Harding, was black; the suggestion that Hardings fathers second wife divorced him because he was too much Negro for her to endure. In Chancellors book, such stories are relayed with a bitter, racist glee, ample reason not to accept them out of hand. But if none of this had any resemblance to the truth, how did all of these rumors get started?
In 1968, the Harding biographer Francis Russell offered an explanation: Hardings great-great-grandfather Amos told his descendants that he once caught a man killing his neighbors apple trees and that the man started the rumor in retaliation, a rather weak story that Russell declined to endorse and that did not silence the mixed-blood rumors. Well into the 1930s, African-Americans claiming a family link continued to pop up in the press. (One decidedly dark-skinned Oliver Harding, supposedly the presidents great-uncle, appeared in Abbotts Monthly, a black-owned Chicago magazine, in 1932.) As recently as 2005, a Michigan schoolteacher named Marsha Stewart issued her own claim to Harding ancestry. While growing up, she wrote, we were never allowed to talk about the relationship to a U.S. president outside family gatherings because we were colored and Warren was passing. Genetic testing and genealogical research may one day prove the truth or falsity of such claims. In the meantime, as the campaign season plunges us headlong into a national conversation about race, its worth thinking about why that truth has been so hard to come by for so long, about what makes it into our official history and what we choose to excise along the way. Hardings hometown, Marion, Ohio, provides a case in point. The town gained national fame in 1920 as the site of Hardings front-porch campaign; for weeks, he delivered stump speeches from his well-tended home. Far less well known, as the historian Phillip Payne has noted, is what happened the year before, when a mob of armed white Marion residents drove more than 200 black families out of town, one of a wave of postwar race riots that served to segregate the industrialized north.
As he campaigns to become the nations first (openly) black president, Barack Obama likes to say that we've begun to put that divisive history behind us. The truth may be that we dont yet know the half of it.
From a New York Times article dated 6 April...enjoy!
Will Americans vote for a black president? If the notorious historian William Estabrook Chancellor was right, we already did. In the early 1920s, Chancellor helped assemble a controversial biographical portrait accusing President Warren Harding of covering up his family's colored past. According to the family tree Chancellor created, Harding was actually the great-grandson of a black woman. Under the one-drop rule of American race relations, Chancellor claimed, the country had inadvertently elected its first Negro president. In todays presidential landscape, many Americans view the prospect of a black man in the Oval Office as a sign of progress evidence of a postracial national consciousness. In the white-supremacist heyday of the 1920s (the Ku Klux Klan had a major revival during the Harding years), the taint of Negro blood was political death. The Harding forces hit back hard against Chancellor, driving him out of his job and destroying all but a handful of published copies of his book. In the decades since, many biographers have dismissed the rumors of Hardings mixed-race family as little more than a political scandal and Chancellor himself as a Democratic mudslinger and racist ideologue. But as with the long-denied and now all-but-proved allegations of Thomas Jeffersons affair with his slave Sally Hemings, there is reason to question the denials. From the perspective of 2008, when interracial sex is seen as a historical fact of life instead of an abomination, the circumstantial case for Hardings mixed-race ancestry is intriguing though not definitive. To anyone who tracks it down today, Chancellors book comes across as a laughable partisan screed, an amalgam of bizarre racial theories, outlandish stereotypes and cheap political insults. But it also contains a remarkable trove of social knowledge the kind of community gossip and oral tradition that rarely appears in official records but often provides clues to richer truths. When he toured Ohio in 1920, Chancellor claimed to find dozens of acquaintances and neighbors willing to swear that the Hardings had been considered black for generations. Among the persuaded, according to rumor, was Hardings father-in-law, Amos Kling, one of the richest men in Hardings adopted hometown of Marion. When Harding married his daughter, Florence, in 1891, Kling supposedly denounced her for polluting the family line. There were rumors of other family scandals as well: the 1849 case in which one David Butler killed Amos Smith after Smith claimed that Butlers wife, a Harding, was black; the suggestion that Hardings fathers second wife divorced him because he was too much Negro for her to endure. In Chancellors book, such stories are relayed with a bitter, racist glee, ample reason not to accept them out of hand. But if none of this had any resemblance to the truth, how did all of these rumors get started?
In 1968, the Harding biographer Francis Russell offered an explanation: Hardings great-great-grandfather Amos told his descendants that he once caught a man killing his neighbors apple trees and that the man started the rumor in retaliation, a rather weak story that Russell declined to endorse and that did not silence the mixed-blood rumors. Well into the 1930s, African-Americans claiming a family link continued to pop up in the press. (One decidedly dark-skinned Oliver Harding, supposedly the presidents great-uncle, appeared in Abbotts Monthly, a black-owned Chicago magazine, in 1932.) As recently as 2005, a Michigan schoolteacher named Marsha Stewart issued her own claim to Harding ancestry. While growing up, she wrote, we were never allowed to talk about the relationship to a U.S. president outside family gatherings because we were colored and Warren was passing. Genetic testing and genealogical research may one day prove the truth or falsity of such claims. In the meantime, as the campaign season plunges us headlong into a national conversation about race, its worth thinking about why that truth has been so hard to come by for so long, about what makes it into our official history and what we choose to excise along the way. Hardings hometown, Marion, Ohio, provides a case in point. The town gained national fame in 1920 as the site of Hardings front-porch campaign; for weeks, he delivered stump speeches from his well-tended home. Far less well known, as the historian Phillip Payne has noted, is what happened the year before, when a mob of armed white Marion residents drove more than 200 black families out of town, one of a wave of postwar race riots that served to segregate the industrialized north.
As he campaigns to become the nations first (openly) black president, Barack Obama likes to say that we've begun to put that divisive history behind us. The truth may be that we dont yet know the half of it.
FFT... just in case you thought the political landscape was a new edition of a contemporary soap opera....
Our forefathers and two plus centennials ago.... AND THEY WERE BOTH WHITE...!!!/caucasian(p.c. term) ummmmm, mebbee not... DNA test are not back yet, and even so, one still got his head on a nickel.... will history repeat itself.... let's hope not... at least not like this... but imagine it taking place with today's media coverage... p.s. don't forget to click 'more'...
(Mental Floss ) -- Negative campaigning in America was sired by two lifelong friends, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Back in 1776, the dynamic duo combined powers to help claim America's independence, and they had nothing but love and respect for one another. But by 1800, party politics had so distanced the pair that, for the first and last time in U.S. history, a president found himself running against his vice president. Despite their bruising campaign, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams became friends again.
Despite their bruising campaign, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams became friends again.
Things got ugly fast. Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."
In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father."
As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. See 8 great campaign slogans ?
Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind." Mental Floss: Jefferson: The sensitive writer type
Jefferson hires a hatchet man
Back then, presidential candidates didn't actively campaign. In fact, Adams and Jefferson spent much of the election season at their respective homes in Massachusetts and Virginia.
But the key difference between the two politicians was that Jefferson hired a hatchet man named James Callendar to do his smearing for him. Adams, on the other hand, considered himself above such tactics. To Jefferson's credit, Callendar proved incredibly effective, convincing many Americans that Adams desperately wanted to attack France. Although the claim was completely untrue, voters bought it, and Jefferson stole the election.
Jefferson paid a price for his dirty campaign tactics, though. Callendar served jail time for the slander he wrote about Adams, and when he emerged from prison in 1801, he felt Jefferson still owed him.
After Jefferson did little to appease him, Callendar broke a story in 1802 that had only been a rumor until then -- that the President was having an affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. In a series of articles, Callendar claimed that Jefferson had lived with Hemings in France and that she had given birth to five of his children.
The story plagued Jefferson for the rest of his career. And although generations of historians shrugged off the story as part of Callendar's propaganda, DNA testing in 1998 showed a link between Hemings' descendents and the Jefferson family.
Just as truth persists, however, so does friendship. Twelve years after the vicious election of 1800, Adams and Jefferson began writing letters to each other and became friends again. They remained pen pals for the rest of their lives and passed away on the same day, July 4, 1826. It was the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Mental Floss: The post-White House lives of presidents
John Quincy Adams gets slapped with elitism
John Adams lived long enough to see his son become president in 1825, but he died before John Quincy Adams lost the presidency to Andrew Jackson in 1828. Fortunately, that meant he didn't have to witness what many historians consider the nastiest contest in American history.
The slurs flew back and forth, with John Quincy Adams being labeled a pimp, and Andrew Jackson's wife getting called a slut.
As the election progressed, editorials in the American newspapers read more like bathroom graffiti than political commentary. One paper reported that "General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute, brought to this country by the British soldiers! She afterward married a mulatto man, with whom she had several children, of which number General Jackson is one!"
What got Americans so fired up? For one thing, many voters felt John Quincy Adams should never have been president in the first place. During the election of 1824, Jackson had won the popular vote but not the electoral vote, so the election was decided by the House of Representatives. Henry Clay, one of the other candidates running for president, threw his support behind Adams. To return the favor, Adams promptly made him secretary of state. Jackson's supporters labeled it "The Corrupt Bargain" and spent the next four years calling Adams a usurper. Mental Floss: 5 secrets left off the White House tour
Beyond getting the short end of the electoral stick, Andrew Jackson managed to connect with voters via his background -- which couldn't have been more different than Adams'.
By the time John Quincy was 15, he'd traveled extensively in Europe, mastered several languages, and worked as a translator in the court of Catherine the Great.
Meanwhile, Andrew Jackson had none of those privileges. By 15, he'd been kidnapped and beaten by British soldiers, orphaned, and left to fend for himself on the streets of South Carolina.
Adams was a Harvard-educated diplomat from a prominent New England family. Jackson was a humble war hero from the rural South who'd never learned to spell. He was the first presidential candidate in American history to really sell himself as a man of the people, and the people loved him for it.
Having been denied their candidate in 1824, the masses were up in arms for Jackson four years later. And though his lack of education and political experience terrified many Adams supporters, that argument didn't hold water for the throngs who lined up to cast their votes for "Old Hickory." Ever since Jackson's decisive victory, no presidential candidate has dared take a step toward the White House without first holding hands with the common man.
But losing the 1828 election may have been the best thing to happen to John Quincy Adams. After sulking home to Massachusetts, Adams pulled himself together and ran for Congress, launching an epic phase of his career.
During his 17 years in the House of Representatives, Adams became an abolitionist hero, championing legislation to open the debate on slavery. And in 1841, he famously put his money where his mouth was, when he defended the 39 African captives aboard the slave ship Amistad before the U.S. Supreme Court. At a time when all but two of the justices were pro-slavery, Adams won his human rights plea.
FFT... just in case you thought the political landscape was a new edition of a contemporary soap opera....
Our forefathers and two plus centennials ago.... AND THEY WERE BOTH WHITE...!!!/caucasian(p.c. term) ummmmm, mebbee not... DNA test are not back yet, and even so, one still got his head on a nickel.... will history repeat itself.... let's hope not... at least not like this... but imagine it taking place with today's media coverage... p.s. don't forget to click 'more'...
(Mental Floss ) -- Negative campaigning in America was sired by two lifelong friends, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Back in 1776, the dynamic duo combined powers to help claim America's independence, and they had nothing but love and respect for one another. But by 1800, party politics had so distanced the pair that, for the first and last time in U.S. history, a president found himself running against his vice president. Despite their bruising campaign, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams became friends again.
Despite their bruising campaign, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams became friends again.
Things got ugly fast. Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."
In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father."
As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. See 8 great campaign slogans ?
Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind." Mental Floss: Jefferson: The sensitive writer type
Jefferson hires a hatchet man
Back then, presidential candidates didn't actively campaign. In fact, Adams and Jefferson spent much of the election season at their respective homes in Massachusetts and Virginia.
But the key difference between the two politicians was that Jefferson hired a hatchet man named James Callendar to do his smearing for him. Adams, on the other hand, considered himself above such tactics. To Jefferson's credit, Callendar proved incredibly effective, convincing many Americans that Adams desperately wanted to attack France. Although the claim was completely untrue, voters bought it, and Jefferson stole the election.
Jefferson paid a price for his dirty campaign tactics, though. Callendar served jail time for the slander he wrote about Adams, and when he emerged from prison in 1801, he felt Jefferson still owed him.
After Jefferson did little to appease him, Callendar broke a story in 1802 that had only been a rumor until then -- that the President was having an affair with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. In a series of articles, Callendar claimed that Jefferson had lived with Hemings in France and that she had given birth to five of his children.
The story plagued Jefferson for the rest of his career. And although generations of historians shrugged off the story as part of Callendar's propaganda, DNA testing in 1998 showed a link between Hemings' descendents and the Jefferson family.
Just as truth persists, however, so does friendship. Twelve years after the vicious election of 1800, Adams and Jefferson began writing letters to each other and became friends again. They remained pen pals for the rest of their lives and passed away on the same day, July 4, 1826. It was the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Mental Floss: The post-White House lives of presidents
John Quincy Adams gets slapped with elitism
John Adams lived long enough to see his son become president in 1825, but he died before John Quincy Adams lost the presidency to Andrew Jackson in 1828. Fortunately, that meant he didn't have to witness what many historians consider the nastiest contest in American history.
The slurs flew back and forth, with John Quincy Adams being labeled a pimp, and Andrew Jackson's wife getting called a slut.
As the election progressed, editorials in the American newspapers read more like bathroom graffiti than political commentary. One paper reported that "General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute, brought to this country by the British soldiers! She afterward married a mulatto man, with whom she had several children, of which number General Jackson is one!"
What got Americans so fired up? For one thing, many voters felt John Quincy Adams should never have been president in the first place. During the election of 1824, Jackson had won the popular vote but not the electoral vote, so the election was decided by the House of Representatives. Henry Clay, one of the other candidates running for president, threw his support behind Adams. To return the favor, Adams promptly made him secretary of state. Jackson's supporters labeled it "The Corrupt Bargain" and spent the next four years calling Adams a usurper. Mental Floss: 5 secrets left off the White House tour
Beyond getting the short end of the electoral stick, Andrew Jackson managed to connect with voters via his background -- which couldn't have been more different than Adams'.
By the time John Quincy was 15, he'd traveled extensively in Europe, mastered several languages, and worked as a translator in the court of Catherine the Great.
Meanwhile, Andrew Jackson had none of those privileges. By 15, he'd been kidnapped and beaten by British soldiers, orphaned, and left to fend for himself on the streets of South Carolina.
Adams was a Harvard-educated diplomat from a prominent New England family. Jackson was a humble war hero from the rural South who'd never learned to spell. He was the first presidential candidate in American history to really sell himself as a man of the people, and the people loved him for it.
Having been denied their candidate in 1824, the masses were up in arms for Jackson four years later. And though his lack of education and political experience terrified many Adams supporters, that argument didn't hold water for the throngs who lined up to cast their votes for "Old Hickory." Ever since Jackson's decisive victory, no presidential candidate has dared take a step toward the White House without first holding hands with the common man.
But losing the 1828 election may have been the best thing to happen to John Quincy Adams. After sulking home to Massachusetts, Adams pulled himself together and ran for Congress, launching an epic phase of his career.
During his 17 years in the House of Representatives, Adams became an abolitionist hero, championing legislation to open the debate on slavery. And in 1841, he famously put his money where his mouth was, when he defended the 39 African captives aboard the slave ship Amistad before the U.S. Supreme Court. At a time when all but two of the justices were pro-slavery, Adams won his human rights plea.
The literary standard, and the most referenced work on this subject, is Joel A. Rogers 19 page pamphlet, The Five Negro Presidents.
Obviously, the one-drop rule applied here. This was a decree that defined a person black, if one drop of Afrikan ancestry was in a person's lineage. It was used during slavery, the Jim Crow period of segregation in the South, and upheld in southern courts.
Rogers, in chronicling five black presidents, according to European descent sources he used, offers a strong argument that there may have been black presidents in the past. Critics claimed he did not supply enough credible evidence.
He begins with Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd president of the US. "The chief attack on Jefferson was in a book written by Thomas Hazard in 1867 called The Johnny Cake Papers. Hazard interviewed Paris Gardiner, who said he was present during the 1796 presidential campaign, when one speaker states that Thomas Jefferson was 'a mean-spirited son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginia mulatto father.'" Jefferson destroyed all papers, portraits and personal effects of his mother when she died.
Andrew Jackson, the 7th president, also has a curious background. In the Virginia Magazine of History, it states 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. (John M. Belohlavek. "Assault on the president: the Jackson-Randolph affair of 1833")
Another source stated, "General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute...brought to this country by the British soldiers! She afterward married a mulatto man, with whom she had several children, of which number General Jackson is one." (Robert Remini. Andrew Jackson)
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, was seen as the man who abolished slavery; thus, his nickname, "The Great Emancipator". His motives were other than altruistic, as well as his view that enslaved Afrikans were inferior. "I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races--that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together in terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior. I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." (Sixth Debate with Steven A. Douglas at Quincy, Ill. Oct. 13, 1858)
Rogers says of Lincoln, that he "was the illegitimate son of an African man. Lincoln's mother was said to have admitted that he was the progeny of a black man. William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, said that Lincoln had very dark skin and coarse hair and that his mother was from an Ethiopian tribe. In Herndon's book entitled The Hidden Lincoln he says that Thomas Lincoln (Lincoln's acknowledged father) could not have been Abraham Lincoln's father because he was sterile from childhood mumps and was later castrated."
Warren Harding, the 29th president, never denied his black heritage. "Harding had black ancestors between both sets of parents. William Chancellor, a white professor of economics and politics at Wooster College in Ohio, wrote a book on the Harding family genealogy and identified Black ancestors among both parents of President Harding. Justice Department agents allegedly bought and destroyed all copies of this book. Chancellor also said that Harding's only academic credentials included education at Iberia College, which was founded in order to educate fugitive slaves." (Rogers)
Monica Haynes, of the Pittsburg Courier wrote, in her infamous article, "Racial heritage of six former presidents is questioned," "However, Marsha Stewart doesn't need any professional research. Mrs. Stewart, a 60-year-old black woman who teaches in suburban Detroit, said Mr. Harding is her cousin. She said it's something the family always has known but didn't publicly talk about. (February 5, 2008)
Dr. Leroy Vaughn, who quoted J.A. Rogers liberally, stated in his book, Black People and Their Place in World History, about Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, "He claimed his mother was dark because of mixed Indian ancestry. Coolidge's mother's maiden name was 'Moor', in Europe the name was given to all blacks. Dr. Auset Bakhufu says that by 1800 the New England Indian was hardly any longer pure Indian, because they had mixed so often with Blacks."
Bakhufu, in his previously mentioned out of print book, lists Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President, as the sixth black president. "According to research found in Wikipedia, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration confirms Eisenhower, the 34th president, also had black ancestors. His mother, Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower was part black. This is also verified by Answers.com and several other web sites." (Aysha Hussain. "Eisenhower, Too? Were There More Than 5 'Black' Presidents?")
"Many of Eisenhower's ancestors, from his mother's side of the family, carried African names - names that were heard in and around the pyramids and temples in ancient times. Two female ancestors' names were Hypatia, i.e., Hypatia Link and Hypatia McGhee. Hypatia was an African mathematician and teacher." (Bakhufu)
Rogers, in his previous mentioned pamphlet, referred to Eisenhower as a black president, but did not mention his name. Eisenhower was still alive when he completed his work, and perhaps did not want to spark a nasty debate. However, the evidence shows Rogers was clandestinely talking about Eisenhower. He mentioned this unnamed president's mother being born in Virginia. No other president's mother after Harding was born there.
Currently, there is no known DNA evidence on any of the previously mentioned presidents to add to the eyewitness and secondary accounts of racial identification. The discussion is probably similar to that which took place in Kemet (Egypt) after Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, master historian, anthropologist, physicist and politician, conducted the melanin dosage test on certain royal mummies, proving they were black. Such tests are no longer allowed.
Senator Barack Obama has re-ignited this topic. If he becomes the first declared black president maybe some will come out of the color closet.
By the way, Obama, in Kiswahili (spoken in Kenya, home of his father) means 'sent by God.'
The literary standard, and the most referenced work on this subject, is Joel A. Rogers 19 page pamphlet, The Five Negro Presidents.
Obviously, the one-drop rule applied here. This was a decree that defined a person black, if one drop of Afrikan ancestry was in a person's lineage. It was used during slavery, the Jim Crow period of segregation in the South, and upheld in southern courts.
Rogers, in chronicling five black presidents, according to European descent sources he used, offers a strong argument that there may have been black presidents in the past. Critics claimed he did not supply enough credible evidence.
He begins with Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd president of the US. "The chief attack on Jefferson was in a book written by Thomas Hazard in 1867 called The Johnny Cake Papers. Hazard interviewed Paris Gardiner, who said he was present during the 1796 presidential campaign, when one speaker states that Thomas Jefferson was 'a mean-spirited son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginia mulatto father.'" Jefferson destroyed all papers, portraits and personal effects of his mother when she died.
Andrew Jackson, the 7th president, also has a curious background. In the Virginia Magazine of History, it states 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. (John M. Belohlavek. "Assault on the president: the Jackson-Randolph affair of 1833")
Another source stated, "General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute...brought to this country by the British soldiers! She afterward married a mulatto man, with whom she had several children, of which number General Jackson is one." (Robert Remini. Andrew Jackson)
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, was seen as the man who abolished slavery; thus, his nickname, "The Great Emancipator". His motives were other than altruistic, as well as his view that enslaved Afrikans were inferior. "I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races--that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together in terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior. I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." (Sixth Debate with Steven A. Douglas at Quincy, Ill. Oct. 13, 1858)
Rogers says of Lincoln, that he "was the illegitimate son of an African man. Lincoln's mother was said to have admitted that he was the progeny of a black man. William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, said that Lincoln had very dark skin and coarse hair and that his mother was from an Ethiopian tribe. In Herndon's book entitled The Hidden Lincoln he says that Thomas Lincoln (Lincoln's acknowledged father) could not have been Abraham Lincoln's father because he was sterile from childhood mumps and was later castrated."
Warren Harding, the 29th president, never denied his black heritage. "Harding had black ancestors between both sets of parents. William Chancellor, a white professor of economics and politics at Wooster College in Ohio, wrote a book on the Harding family genealogy and identified Black ancestors among both parents of President Harding. Justice Department agents allegedly bought and destroyed all copies of this book. Chancellor also said that Harding's only academic credentials included education at Iberia College, which was founded in order to educate fugitive slaves." (Rogers)
Monica Haynes, of the Pittsburg Courier wrote, in her infamous article, "Racial heritage of six former presidents is questioned," "However, Marsha Stewart doesn't need any professional research. Mrs. Stewart, a 60-year-old black woman who teaches in suburban Detroit, said Mr. Harding is her cousin. She said it's something the family always has known but didn't publicly talk about. (February 5, 2008)
Dr. Leroy Vaughn, who quoted J.A. Rogers liberally, stated in his book, Black People and Their Place in World History, about Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, "He claimed his mother was dark because of mixed Indian ancestry. Coolidge's mother's maiden name was 'Moor', in Europe the name was given to all blacks. Dr. Auset Bakhufu says that by 1800 the New England Indian was hardly any longer pure Indian, because they had mixed so often with Blacks."
Bakhufu, in his previously mentioned out of print book, lists Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President, as the sixth black president. "According to research found in Wikipedia, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration confirms Eisenhower, the 34th president, also had black ancestors. His mother, Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower was part black. This is also verified by Answers.com and several other web sites." (Aysha Hussain. "Eisenhower, Too? Were There More Than 5 'Black' Presidents?")
"Many of Eisenhower's ancestors, from his mother's side of the family, carried African names - names that were heard in and around the pyramids and temples in ancient times. Two female ancestors' names were Hypatia, i.e., Hypatia Link and Hypatia McGhee. Hypatia was an African mathematician and teacher." (Bakhufu)
Rogers, in his previous mentioned pamphlet, referred to Eisenhower as a black president, but did not mention his name. Eisenhower was still alive when he completed his work, and perhaps did not want to spark a nasty debate. However, the evidence shows Rogers was clandestinely talking about Eisenhower. He mentioned this unnamed president's mother being born in Virginia. No other president's mother after Harding was born there.
Currently, there is no known DNA evidence on any of the previously mentioned presidents to add to the eyewitness and secondary accounts of racial identification. The discussion is probably similar to that which took place in Kemet (Egypt) after Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, master historian, anthropologist, physicist and politician, conducted the melanin dosage test on certain royal mummies, proving they were black. Such tests are no longer allowed.
Senator Barack Obama has re-ignited this topic. If he becomes the first declared black president maybe some will come out of the color closet.
By the way, Obama, in Kiswahili (spoken in Kenya, home of his father) means 'sent by God.'
Actually, the possibility of DNA testing has been refused by the family...guess some folks just dont want to know... Met some of Matthew Henson's descendents in northern Alaska back in the 70's during a training mission with the 82nd. First time I ever saw a black eskimo...
Actually, the possibility of DNA testing has been refused by the family...guess some folks just dont want to know... Met some of Matthew Henson's descendents in northern Alaska back in the 70's during a training mission with the 82nd. First time I ever saw a black eskimo...
Quoting: Originally posted by cimarron12 I wouldn't be surprised if one day strong evidence in presented pointing to Harding's alleged blackness. It seems that there are two categories of history, fact and fabrication, which is often the official version. Example of Fact: Mathew Henson was first to the North Pole. Example of fabrication: Robert Peary was first.
}quote[Example of Fact: Mathew Henson was first to the North Pole. Example of fabrication: Robert Peary was first]quote[
and... the fiction that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone, and the fact that it was Antonio meucci.
History(HIS-STORY) is written by those in power.....
Quoting cimarron12:
I wouldn't be surprised if one day strong evidence in presented pointing to Harding's alleged blackness. It seems that there are two categories of history, fact and fabrication, which is often the official version. Example of Fact: Mathew Henson was first to the North Pole. Example of fabrication: Robert Peary was first.
}quote[Example of Fact: Mathew Henson was first to the North Pole. Example of fabrication: Robert Peary was first]quote[
and... the fiction that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone, and the fact that it was Antonio meucci.
History(HIS-STORY) is written by those in power.....
This type of campaigning isn't confined to acient history Jammer. In 2000 the dubya campaign included rumors of McCain having an out-of-wedlock child with a black prostitute, when in actuality he and Cindy had adopted an Indonesian child. But the rumor is what helped change the minds of the Christian Coalitionists of South Carolina away from McC and to dubya and gave him his first big victory in that primary.
Everyone has heard me mention many times 'very conservative Cincinnati', well Marion is north of here and until very recently (in my lifetime) was heavily Klan country. Southern Ohio still has much of that residual legacy and is reflected in the politics here.
This type of campaigning isn't confined to acient history Jammer. In 2000 the dubya campaign included rumors of McCain having an out-of-wedlock child with a black prostitute, when in actuality he and Cindy had adopted an Indonesian child. But the rumor is what helped change the minds of the Christian Coalitionists of South Carolina away from McC and to dubya and gave him his first big victory in that primary.
Everyone has heard me mention many times 'very conservative Cincinnati', well Marion is north of here and until very recently (in my lifetime) was heavily Klan country. Southern Ohio still has much of that residual legacy and is reflected in the politics here.
