Talk:Black president

convert this dab page to an index or list page?
This is unorthodox, but I'm not sure of the best solution. I added Further Reading because it's relevant to Black Presidents and is easily expandable, and I did that because I didn't know where else to put it. The subject of Black Presidents is notable and warrants an article, but, if I wrote it right now, it would be a stub. It would deserve to have a section on the potential for Black candidacies, which almost certainly was discussed in print sources, even when no African Americans threw themselves into contention. We could convert this disambiguation page to an index page listing articles and allowing more content without being a full-fledged article. Any thoughts? Nick Levinson (talk) 17:29, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

arguably 5 or more U.S. Black Presidents before Obama
A source pointing to other sources to consider is Rogers, J. A., The Five Negro Presidents: According to What White People Said They Were (St. Petersburg, Fla.: Helga M. Rogers, [reprinted 1993 or later] 1965 (ISBN 0-9602294-8-5)) (title per p. [1] (title p.)) (title per cover I: The Five Negro Presidents: U.S.A.) (reprinting implied from mention of copyright renewal date on p. [1] (title p.)) (orders through Simon & Schuster, Old Tappan, N.J.) (author had audiences who asked questions, per p. 13, thus apparently a speaker). This work's reliability is unclear, the author's credentials being unstated, the similarity of the author's and the publisher's names suggesting intrafamilial publication or effectively self-publication, Simon & Schuster having no apparent editorial role, a newspaper's month and day apparently being wrong, and some cited authors' names apparently being spelled variously within the work, but some or all of the works cited within it stand on their own as reliable sources for when they were published, some decades ago. According to this work, Black ancestry was ascribed by whites to Presidents Warren G. Harding (id., pp. 11–13 & also cover I & pp. [1] & 3), Thomas Jefferson (id., p. 6 & also p. 3), Andrew Jackson (id., p. 6 & also p. 3), Abraham Lincoln (id., pp. 8–9 & also pp. 3 & 7), and one whom the author refused to identify but about whom the author supplied facts that may be sufficient as clues to their identity (id., p. 13) (mother born in Virginia &, as to the person who was or became President, mention as a "smear" in Baltimore Afro-American (author there a columnist)). Not all of the evidence is strong; for example, evidence of a Black sibling is not evidence of oneself being Black if either a mother or a father was not shared, but, once the issue was credibly raised on a prima facie basis, neither can the sibling's race be ignored until it is known that both parents were shared for both siblings, so that it may remain a matter for investigation, albeit not yet qualified for Wikipedia article content.

One Vice President may have been Black. Although the work doesn't say he was President, if he was inaugurated as Vice President before Lincoln was inaugurated as President, then perhaps (as discussed below) he was the acting President for a few minutes. The Vice President was Hannibal Hamlin (id., pp. 9–10)).

My own speculation raises another possibility. It is the U.S. custom to inaugurate a Vice President before inaugurating a President. It is law that an outgoing President's term ends regardless of whether a successor has been inaugurated. Therefore, a Vice President becomes an acting President after the outgoing President's term ends and until the President-Elect is inaugurated. I don't know if that was true all the way back to the first-term inauguration of George Washington; however, we have had more than 44 Presidents (today's President, Barack Obama, is usually counted as the 44th). Al Gore campaigned for the Presidency partly by pointing out, in humor but not inaccurately, that he, because he was previously Vice President, had been President for seven minutes, during which time the economy soared and the world was at peace (closely paraphrasing his words). So the count of Presidents is higher than usually announced. If five of 44 Presidents may have been of African descent, then perhaps more than five of perhaps 60, 80, or another number of Presidents, counted as including Vice Presidents who were Presidents for a few minutes each, were of African descent. Considering that a Vice President may need to serve as President for years, a Black being Vice President before Obama's election is historically significant, albeit not to the same degree. At any rate, I have no additional names to suggest.

The importance of this kind of research is arguably lessened by the achievement of Obama's election, but it is not unimportant.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:34, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

before George Washington as national President
I vaguely recall a claim that there was a U.S. President under the Articles of Confederation, which was this nation's first organic law, preceding the Constitution (the Constitution came into effect years after independence, in 1789). Or maybe I'm wrong but there was an official (whose name I've long forgotten) of the Constitutional Convention that drafted the Constitution. Or maybe I'm wrong about both. But if he existed, I vaguely recall a claim that he was Black. In either case, he would have held office before George Washington was elected. By the way, either position would have been weak; the Articles of Confederation created a weaker national government than the Constitution did and the Convention position would probably have been administrative, ceremonial, clerical, or internally diplomatic (e.g., keeping things organized and egos apart). I don't remember what source I saw, other than that I didn't think it was reliable, just that it raised an interesting possibility. Does anyone know if there was such a President and if he was Black? If you do, please edit the disambiguation page accordingly. Nick Levinson (talk) 15:43, 11 May 2012 (UTC) (Corrected wording: 15:50, 11 May 2012 (UTC))

early-mid September, 2012, edits
What happened over the centuries was that people made accusations against Presidential hopefuls, accusations often with not much factual basis but with just enough credibility to gain notoriety and be reported. That still happens in competitive campaigns, Presidential and dogcatcher-level, especially when defense or denial is hard to do credibly. The significance here of these old Presidential cases is that the charges were that the candidates were Black, charges which back then would horrify enough voters to matter. The subject is historically important, as we can trace the changes to where a President who is indisputably Black is elected and (as of today) may win re-election, so the history about the past Presidential candidates should be reported in Wikipedia, and this article highlights the common factor (the accusation) and links to the relevant biographical articles. More information about the charge against each candidate is in an article about that candidate, and it was better to link to them than to state all the charges in this article.

I'm not sure we can say that any of the charges were known to be either true or false as of when it was made or when the election was. The standards of proof on many matters, not just race, were looser than they are today, and necessarily so, since people wanted answers and DNA tests didn't exist yet. Warren G. Harding said something like, "How would I know? Maybe someone jumped the fence." Presumably, he would know his family's history better than almost anyone outside of his family. Since being White was considered good and being Black bad, presumably he'd trumpet the one and hide the other, so a quote like that implies knowledge of being Black. But maybe he wasn't Black at all (except in the distant sense of everyone being Black, probably unknown then). So calling the charge alleged or by some such adjective is about as close to accuracy as we can get, from either direction.

Notability applies to the subject of an article, not to each fact in an article. All of the relevant Presidential candidates are notable.

I'm restoring, although I'm also rewording.

Nick Levinson (talk) 14:37, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

"how do I know, jim?"
(The following was started at my talk page with the same topic/section title and is copied here for any continuation. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:12, 4 October 2012 (UTC))


 * hi,


 * did you know that @ Warren_G._Harding there is a quote from prez harding where he's asked about his possible black lineage and grants that it was possible? idk if you wanna research & make sure that that's accurate. I am not gonna mess w/ harding article. this is all to say: I am adding that "the presidents or thier campaigns denied the claims" @ black president. thx hmu if any problems skakEL 15:00, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I do know something like that about Harding (I think I read a couple of slightly different versions of the story but its essence is probably trustworthy), although I don't plan to dig further into it, since I don't know that there would be much to add. I agree on saying campaigns and not just Presidential candidates denied; it's entirely possible that Presidential candidates wanted to be above that (not necessarily in a nonracist sense) so as not to give too much credibility to the opposition's claims and therefore let their campaign surrogates et al. deny it for them. Without looking in sources, at this moment I don't remember whether each of these four candidates personally denied the claim, so the alternative as an expansion is a good idea. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 16:12, 4 October 2012 (UTC)