On election night I heard some claiming they never thought they would see it in their lifetime and how this election would go done in History for electing the first black US President. BUT What do you think should Obama beable to claim being the first Black President and was History set in Nov 2008?
Don't kill the messenger here I'm just asking a simple question. Should Obama go down in History as the first Black President when he has no more black blood running through his veins than the first 6 did? And in the case of Harding less :???:
Why Obama wont be the first black president
BY Dotun Adebayo
TRENDY YOUNG Nichelle Carr is one of the high-flying African American attorneys backing Obama from these shores.
She works for the top law firm Linklaters, which advises the world's leading companies, financial institutions and governments, and represents a new class of black middle class here in Britain.
She had dinner at my home the other evening, and I couldn’t help wondering whether she should be as excited as she is about the prospect of America’s first black president. After all, Obama will not be the first.
If African-Americans knew the real story of their history, I wonder how many of them would be jumping up and down as if Obama was the second coming. He’s not even the third coming, or the fourth. In fact, if he kicks John McCain into touch come November, Barack will be the SEVENTH black president of the United. Yes, seventh.
Remember, it’s racist America we’re talking about, where the one drop rule applies (one drop of African blood). In which case Dwight D. Eisenhower, the wartime general who became president in the fifties, is a bruvva. As one historian has recently pointed out, Eisenhower’s mum, Ida Elizabeth Stover Eisenhower, was black.
Black historians have written extensively that Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower had black ancestors. These historians include Joel A. Rodgers, Dr. Leroy Vaughn, and Dr. Auset Bakhufu.
Black historians, however, were not the first to write about the five presidents' racially mixed families. White historians and political opponents also wrote about their black ancestors, but the books were either destroyed, went out of print or are hard to find.
The difference between Obama and these presidents is that they all passed for white (which he obviously can’t do) and shunned their dark-skinned relatives to hide their racial backgrounds.
In Thomas Jefferson’s case, there is even evidence that his daughter remained a slave during his presidency (check out the book The President’s Daughter by William Wells Brown).
Jefferson, America's third president, had an Indian mother and a mulatto father. Jefferson destroyed all of the papers, portraits and personal effects of his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, when she died on March 31, 1776. He even wrote to everyone who had received letters from his mother to ask that they return them.
Andrew Jackson, the nation's seventh's president, was the son of a black man and an Irish woman. His brother, according to articles and books, was sold into slavery.
But the blackest of the presidents was Warren G. Harding, the 29th president, who served in office from 1921 to 1923. White historians claim Harding was of English and Dutch ancestry, but in truth both his parents were black.
Harding's black ancestors escaped from the South to the North via the Underground Railroad. He even attended a college for fugitive slaves at a time when it would have been unthinkable for any white person to attend such an institution.
Iberia College, in Ohio, was founded to educate fugitive slaves – it’s now called Ohio Central College. When Republicans asked Harding to deny that he was a ‘negro’, Harding said, "How should I know whether or not one of my ancestors might have jumped the fence?"
Harding’s own brother and sisters were raised and treated like ‘coloured’ people. According to one historian, Harding used makeup to lighten his complexion.
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th US president, was the illegitimate son of an African man. Lincoln's mother, Nancy, described her son as having very dark skin and coarse hair.
Historians maintain that Thomas Lincoln was Abraham Lincoln's father, but William H. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, disputes that assumption.
After Lincoln's assassination in 1865, Herndon contacted everyone who knew Lincoln and documented his life. According to the book, The Hidden Lincoln, From The Letters And Papers Of William H. Herndon, Herndon argued that Thomas Lincoln could not have been Abraham Lincoln's father because he was sterile as a result of childhood mumps.
Calvin Coolidge, America's 30th president, admitted that his mother, Victoria Josephine Moor Coolidge, was dark because she was of mixed Indian ancestry. By then of course (1800) New England Indians were not pure because so many of them married black folk.
You see why Garvey said it was important to know your history before we start showing the world how ignorant of our past we are? That’s the Yanks taken care of. I haven’t even started on our black queen Elizabeth II and the other bruvvas and sistas in the royal family.
Don't kill the messenger here I'm just asking a simple question. Should Obama go down in History as the first Black President when he has no more black blood running through his veins than the first 6 did? And in the case of Harding less :???: