The 5 Black Presidents

[CrimsonTide4]

Who Were the 5 Black Presidents?
By C. Stone Brown


* 2004 DiversityInc.com
February 17, 2004

Presidents Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge all have something in common, according to a few past and present historians they all had African-American ancestors.

"I'm always surprised to see attention to this, especially since it wasn't illegal to rape a black woman for the first 300 years of the existence of this country" said Dr. Leroy Vaughn, author of "Black People and Their Place in World History."

"Probably every slave owner had multiple biracial children, and Jefferson had five or six with Sally Hemmings and all of them passed for white. So why would we be shocked to find out that some of them achieved great things?" asked Vaughn.

Vaughn, a Los Angeles ophthalmologist, said he was inspired to write his book because he was tired of all the "lies" written about people of African ancestry. "Everything that I read was a lie … and I wanted to set the record straight."

Part of that record is just one of the 40 chapters in Vaughn's book that deals with the five black presidents, even though his book covers African history going back to 15,000 B.C. The chapter on the presidents, by far, gets the most attention, he said.

In the early 19th and 20th centuries, the standard for determining one's race was simple, one drop of "black blood" made you black, socially and in the eyes of the law. So by that standard, it would appear some of these presidents would have been considered black. Or would they?

Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, was the 16th president and one of the most revered. He was thought by some his contemporaries to be of African descent.

In the book, "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. In addition, Lincoln's presidential opponents made cartoon drawings depicting him as a Negro and nicknamed him "Abraham Africanus the First."

Renowned African-American historian J. A. Rogers, author of the "Five Black Presidents" quotes Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, as saying that Lincoln was the illegitimate son of an African man.

Rogers, who is considered a foremost authority on miscegenation, died in 1966, and authored more than 10 books on the subject. He was Jamaican-born, and later became a citizen of the United States. Some of his books include, "World's Great Men of Color" (Vols. I,II) "Sex & Race" (Vols. I, II, III); "Nature Knows No Color Line," "Africa's Gift to America," and "100 Facts About the Negro with Complete Truth."

Interestingly, President Warren G. Harding, the 29th president (1921 to 1923), never denied his African-American ancestry. Once asked by a reporter about his ancestry, Harding responded by saying, "How should I know?" "One of my ancestors might have jumped the fence."

Vaughn cited the work of William Chancellor, a white professor of economics and politics at Wooster College in Ohio, who wrote a book on the Harding family genealogy and identified African-American ancestors among both of Harding's parents. "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," Vaughn wrote.

Ironically, President Calvin Coolidge, Harding's successor, and 30th president, publicly stated his mother was dark because of mixed Indian ancestry, which made his ancestry less controversial had she been African American. However, this notion was disputed by Auset Bakhufu, author of "The Six Black Presidents" who said in her book that that by 1800s, the New England Indians hardly were pure Indian, because they had mixed so often with blacks. Calvin Coolidge's mother's maiden name was "Moor." In Europe the name "Moor" was given to all black people, just as the name Negro was used in America.

Rogers wrote that Andrew Jackson Sr. died long 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, he wrote.

Vaughn recalled an e-mail he received from a South African school teacher. "The teacher said 'I tried to convince my students that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton weren't the first black presidents, so I was glad to see your Web site.'"

Although Vaughn appreciated the compliment, if he had his druthers, the chapter on the five black presidents would be the least interesting chapter in his book. Out of all "these white guys, not one of them claimed to be black and most of them went overboard hurting black people to prove they were white."