5 Black Presidents in US History!

So I'm sitting in the waiting room at the hospital today. It was a very long wait and so I started looking around at the reading offerings. NW Health. Hmmm looks too healthy to me. Self magazine. Jennifer Garner on the cover looking too chipper and the snippets about losing weight and how to spice up my love life look tedious at best. Diversity Inc. Never saw that one and so I check it out.

I wasn't too impressed with the magazine, but a one-page article talked about something I was totally clueless about. It said we had 5 previous US Presidents that were part black. What!? How come I've never heard of this? I'm not the most learned person in the world, but I don't live under a rock either. It said Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding, Andrew Jackson, and Calvin Coolidge all had black ancestry. This is according to historian Leroy Vaughn who penned Black People and Their Place in World History.

Here's what it said in summary for each:
Thomas Jefferson: "son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginia mulatto father"

Andrew Jackson: "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: "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."

Warren Harding: "Harding had Black ancestors between both sets of parents"

Calvin Coolidge: "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.

So trippy! I'll have to read more on the topic. Here's the article.

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