If elected, would Barack Obama, be the first black president of the United States? 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.

In February of 2004, an article was written by C. Stone Brown, titled “Who Were the 5 Black Presidents?” for DiversityInc magazine. The article was based on a book by Dr. Leroy Vaughn an opthalmogist titled “Black People and Their Place in History”. The following text is a collaboration of his theories and other known historians and authors.

Thomas Jefferson the third elected president, who served two terms between 1801 and 1809 was described as the “son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginia mulatto father,” as stated in Vaughn’s findings. Jefferson also was said to have destroyed all documentation attached to his mother, even going to extremes to seize letters written by his mother to other people. Only in recent years did the family of Thomas Jefferson acknowledged he was the father of the (5 or 6) children born to a slave on his plantation, Sally Hemmings.

President Andrew Jackson, the nation’s seventh president, was in office between 1829 and 1837. A 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.

President Warren Harding, the 29th president, in office between 1921 and 1923, apparently never denied his ancestry. According to Vaughn, William Chancellor, a 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.

The only difference between Barack Obama and most of the former “black” presidents is that none of their family histories were fully acknowledged by others or their selves. Even though Obama is half-white, he strongly resembles his Kenyan father. And not only is Obama open about his ancestry, most people acknowledge and recognize him as a black man, which is why people will identify Obama, if elected, as the first black president of the United States.

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