Black History
Do You Remember the Five Black Presidents?
Compiled by the Diversity, Inc. Magazine staff; February 15, 2008
We keep hearing that this year will mark the first time a major political party in the United States nominated a woman or a Black person as its presidential candidate. For women, that is true, but some historians say Sen. Barack Obama, if elected, would not be the nation's first Black president. They say he certainly won't be the first president with Black ancestors--just the first to acknowledge his Blackness.
Which other presidents hid their African ancestry? Well, it's not Bill Clinton, even though the Congressional Black Caucus honored him as the nation's "first Black president" at its 2001 annual awards dinner. Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge all had Black ancestors they kept in their genealogical closets, according to historians.
Harding did not deny his African ancestry when Republican leaders called on him to deny his "Negro" history. He said, "How should I know whether or not one of my ancestors might have jumped the fence?"
Does African ancestry make these men Black? If the bar is the one-drop rule, then yes. The one-drop rule is a historical term used during the Jim Crow era that defines a person with one drop of sub-Saharan-African ancestry as not white and therefore must be Black. If that's the bar, then there have already been other Black presidents, says historian Leroy Vaughn, author of "Black People and Their Place in World History."
The first president with African ancestry was Jefferson, who served two terms between 1801 and 1809. Jefferson 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.
President Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh president, was in office between 1829 and 1837. Vaughn cites an article written in The Virginia Magazine of History that states 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.
Lincoln, the nation's 16th president, served between 1861 and 1865. Lincoln was said to have been the illegitimate son of an African man, according to Vaughn's findings. 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 opponents.
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.
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. 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. |
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THE GOLDEN THIRTEEN - March, 1944
TOP ROW: John Walter Reagan, Jesse Walter Arbor, Dalton Louis Baugh, Frank Ellis Sublett; MIDDLE ROW: Graham Edward Martin, Charles Byrd Lear, Phillip George Barnes, Reginald E. Goodwin; BOTTOM ROW: James Edward Hair, Samuel Edward Barnes, George Clinton Cooper, William Sylvester White, Dennis Denmark Nelson
In January 1944, the naval officer corps was all white. There were some one hundred thousand African American enlisted men in the Navy, however, none were officers. In response to growing pressure from American civil rights organizations, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Adlai Stevenson, pressured the Navy to begin officer training for 16 African-American enlisted men at Camp Robert Smalls, Recruit Training Center Great Lakes (now known as Great Lakes Naval Training Station), Illinois. All had demonstrated top-notch leadership abilities as enlisted men. Seizing the moment, these young me n worked as a team to complete their studies and, thereby, charted the course of equal opportunity in the Navy for all succeeding years. During their officer candidate training, they compiled a class average of 3.89, a record that has yet to be broken. The Navy thought they cheated because of the high test scores. They made all of them take the test again, individually..................the results were the same.
Although all passed the course, in March 1944, thirteen of the group made history when they became the U.S. Navy's first African-American officers on active duty. John Walter Reagan, Jesse Walter Arbor, Dalton Louis Baugh, Frank Ellis Sublett, Graham Edward Martin, Phillip George Barnes, Reginald E. Goodwin, James Edward Hair, Samuel Edward Barnes, George Clinton Cooper, William Sylvester White, and Dennis Denmark Nelson were commissioned as ensigns. Charles Byrd Lear was commissioned as a warrant officer. They proudly styled themselves "The Golden Thirteen."
They were often denied the privileges and respect routinely accorded white naval officers and were given menial assignments. In World War II, they served with distinction on board Navy ships and shore stations until the end of the war. Each surviving member can claim exceptional success in his chosen civilian profession, whether as an educator, businessman, lawyer, judge, or political leader. The Golden Thirteen continued to provide strong support for the Navy's recruitment and equal opportunity efforts throughout the intervening years. Only one of the Golden Thirteen made a career of the Navy, and he opened still more doors to black officers. The other members of the group made their marks in civilian life after World War II.
President Harry S. Truman officially desegregated the U.S. military in 1948. At the time of the Golden Thirteen's commissioning, there were approximately 100,000 African-American men serving in the United States Navy's enlisted ranks. Frank Ellis Sublett, the last living member of the group died on September 27, 2006.
Today, the Navy salutes the thirteen black officers who were the cutting edge of equal opportunity progress. Their abilities, performance, courage, and tenacity made a difference and constitute worthy examples for all those who pass through the Recruit Processing Facility, named in their honor, to become sailors in the United States Navy.
In 1987, the U.S. Navy reunited the seven living members to dedicate a building in their honor at Great Lakes Naval Recruit Training Command, Illinois. Today, Building 1405 at RTC Great Lakes, where recruits first arrive for basic training, is named "The Golden Thirteen" in honor of them. In 2006, ground was broken on a World War II memorial in North Chicago, Illinois to honor the Golden Thirteen and Dorie Miller. |
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Firsts in Black Labor History |
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Courtesy of Illinois Education Association-NEA
100 East Edwards Street, Springfield, IL 62704-1999
Inside Illinois: 1-800-252-8076; Outside Illinois:1-217-544-0706
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1945 The Ives-Quinn Act, the first state legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of race, creed, or color, was passed.
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Important Dates in Black Labor History |
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(Courtesy of Service Employees International Union)
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1868 - Myers became president of the Colored Caulker's Trades Union Society of Baltimore.
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1869 - The National Labor Union became the first organization of white workers to advocate for the creation of black labor unions and to allow blacks to attend its annual meeting.
- 1886 - There were 60,000 Blacks among the nearly one million membership of the Knights of Labor.
- 1913 - Benjamin H. Fletcher organized the most powerful dock workers' union in Philadelphia, the Marine Transport Workers Union.
- 1917 - The Associated Colored Employees of America was formed.
- 1918 - The Department of Labor's Division of Negro Economics, the first federal bureau to attempt to ease labor-related racial tensions caused by blacks leaving the South, was established.
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1919 - Robert L. Hill of Winchester, Arkansas, a black tenant farmer, formed the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America, an organization comprised of sharecroppers and tenant farmers. The union organized resistance among blacks in Elaine, Arkansas, including withholding black women's services to whites and insisting on higher wages for cotton pickers. The union also hired lawyers at the state capital and planned to sue landlords for shares allegedly withheld from them. The union was destroyed by the repression that ensued following the infamous Elaine Race Riot on September 30. Recommended reading: Blood In Their Eyes, by Grif Stockley.
- 1936 - The National Negro Congress, a left-wing, worker-oriented organization with 500 members, was formed.
- 1941 - The Fair Employment Practice Commission, the first federal agency to promote fair employment practices, was established.
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1945 - The Ives-Quinn Act, the first state legislation prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of race, creed, or color, was passed.
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1963 - A. Philip Randolph and the Negro American Labor Council initiated the famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King, Jr, gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
1960s and 1970s:
- Local 1199NY attracted support from prominent civil rights leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Local 1199 was, in the words of Malcolm X, "not afraid of upsetting the applecart of those people who are running City Hall." In 1969, civil rights leaders rallied together for a massive protest in Charleston, S.C., for a labor dispute so contentious it ultimately led to federal mediation. The union's victory strengthened its ranks and Local 1199 grew to a membership of over 150,000 by the mid-1970s. More importantly, the shared struggle of the Charleston protest forged bonds between Southern civil rights leaders and those attempting to rework traditional unions to serve the needs of black workers.
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National black organizations and labor unions worked together to develop several federally funded programs, including the Recruitment and Training Program (Workers Defense League), the Labor Education and Advancement Program (Urban League), and the Human Resources Development Institute (AFL-CIO). These programs brought blacks into apprenticeship programs in the 1970s, giving some workers long-awaited upward mobility toward more highly skilled and better-paying jobs.
Sources:
- Firsts in Black Labor History (Illinois Education Association)
- Africana.com: Labor Unions in the United States.
- Building Bridges: The Challenge of Organized Labor in Communities of Color, by Robin D.G. Kelley, New York Universit
- African Americans and the American Labor Movement, by James Gilbert Cassedy, Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration, Summer 1997, vol. 29, no. 2
- "Black Workers Remember," by Jacqueline Jones, The American Prospect, vol. 11, no. 15, June 19 - July 3 2000
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