Is Obama really the first fcukin black president?
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So, it’s official, America has a black president. But is he the first? Or the fifth?
Or even the sixth, if you count Dwight D. Eisenhower?
(You drinking again, Strobel? Better get your Obamania shots. Or Obamamania, or whatever.)
No, seriously, stories keep popping up about the lineage of some U.S. presidents. Books have been written.
Are you sitting down? Honest Abe is on the “black” list.
(Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?)
The Great Emancipator’s grandma, it is long rumoured, was Ethiopian. Holy Selassie! Hit it, Abe:
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
Who says Lincoln was part black? A few historians, and Lincoln’s political rivals of the day, playing on his dark skin and curly hair.
One of them ran a cartoon of Abraham Africanus the First.
But Lincoln, some say, was actually the third president of mixed blood.
Thomas Jefferson was first. We know the Man of the People fathered kids with slave Sally Hemings.
But in 1796 a rival thundered that Jefferson had his own mixed past — black, white and native.
Amazing, eh, how deeply race is rooted in American politics.
Andrew Jackson was a “black” president. Calvin Coolidge. Again, mostly according to rivals and rumour mongers.
But Warren Harding is a surer bet. He had at least one black great-grandmother.
This never became a campaign issue. Harding had an even more scandalous quality. He was a newspaperman.
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In 2005, Marsha Stewart, a black Detroit schoolteacher, published a book about her cousin Warren.
She wrote: “While growing up, we were never allowed to talk about the relationship to a U.S. president outside family gatherings because we were ‘coloured’ and Warren was ‘passing.’ ”
Eisenhower is latest on the “black” list, in a 1993 book by a Dr. Auset Bakhufu. You have to go way back on Ike’s mother’s side.
Last February, scholar Russell Riley told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “I don’t think it would be terribly surprising to find that a president did have some blood of African descent. Particularly in the South, where there tended to be so much closeness between black and white.”
Bill Clinton is not on the list, despite what New Yorker magazine said of him in 1998: “White skin notwithstanding, this is our first black president. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”
The writer cited Slick Willy’s skill on saxophone. She was being satirical. But her last sentence is ironic, eh?
I learned a few things watching yesterday’s “moment that will define a generation:”
- Even a cool cucumber like Obama can recite an oath of 35 words and screw up 20 of them.
Ahh, memories of George.
But Obama’s mantle of infallibility is such that everyone blames the chief justice.
- Blame a speechwriter for Obama calling himself the 44th American to take the oath.
There have been just 43 presidents. Grover Cleveland served two separate terms in the 1800s. So there.
- Wow. Aretha Franklin’s chops may be aging, but she’s still the Queen of Soul.
- Not a good day for the bulls and goats of Kenya. Celebratory feasts were held across the homeland of Obama’s dad.
- Man, you know Obama is a big deal when even ESPN carries the inauguration live. Sports is life, I guess.
- I would not want to be in Obama’s shoes. Royal weddings can’t match those crowds. And no man since Sid the Kid has carried such impossible expectations on his shoulders.
The world hopes he’s up to it.
Oh, and I notice he’s left-handed. I had no idea. So that’s the big deal.
He’s the first left-handed black president.
VIa Canoe.ca