This article includes information on the African heritage of presidents of the United States, together with information on unsubstantiated claims that certain presidents of the United States had African ancestry.
Presidents with proven African ancestry Barack Obama Barack Obama, who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017, had an African father and an American mother of almost entirely European ancestry.Scott, Janny, A Singular Woman (2011). His father, Barack Obama Sr. (1936–1982), was a Luo Kenyan from Nyang'oma Kogelo, Kenya. In July 2012, drawing on a combination of historical documents and Y-DNA analysis, Ancestry.com found a strong likelihood that Obama—through his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham—was descended from John Punch, known as the "first official slave in the English colonies", meaning that she too had African ancestry.
Unsubstantiated claims that presidents had African ancestry Claims that certain U.S. presidents other than Barack Obama had African or African-American ancestry have been made by professional historian J. A. Rogers, ophthalmologist Leroy William Vaughn, and psychologist Auset BaKhufu. All base their theories chiefly on the work of J. A. Rogers, who apparently self-published a pamphlet in 1965 claiming that five presidents of the United States, widely accepted as white, also had African ancestry.Rogers, J. A., The Five Negro Presidents: According to What White People Said They Were (St. Petersburg, Fla.: Helga M. Rogers, 1965; ). Historian Henry Louis Gates has written that Rogers's pamphlet "would get the 'Black History Wishful Thinking Prize,' hands down". Vaughn's and BaKhufu's books were also self-published. Vaughn's publisher, Lulu, advertised a self-publication service at its home page, as accessed February 21, 2013.
Historians' and biographers' studies of these presidents have not supported such claims, and they lack empirical evidence. These authors are generally ignored by scholars. They have been classified as "rumormongers and amateur historians" as well as conspiracy theorists. Vaughn and BaKhufu have added little substantive research to their claims, but there have been more rumors of the potential African heritage of other presidents in the decades since Rogers published his pamphlet. These rumors are considered unsubstantiated and have not been acknowledged by historians.
Thomas Jefferson Vaughn and others claim that Thomas Jefferson's mother Jane Randolph Jefferson was of mixed-race ancestry. The academic consensus does not support such claims. For example, in her recent analyses of historical evidence about the Hemings and Jeffersons, scholar Annette Gordon-Reed makes no claim of African descent in the Randolph family.Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello and Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.
Specifically, Vaughn says, "The chief attack on Jefferson was in a book written by Thomas Hazard in 1867 called The Johnny Cake Papers. Hazard interviewed Paris Gardiner, who said he was present during the 1796 presidential campaign, when one speaker states that Thomas Jefferson was a "mean-spirited son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginia mulatto father." An overlapping claim is that, in an 18th-century presidential campaign, someone speaking against Jefferson's candidacy and in favor of that of John Adams accused Jefferson of being "half Injun, half nigger, half Frenchman"Nock, Albert Jay, Jefferson (N.Y.: Hill & Wang (American Century ser.), 1st Am. Century ser. edn September 1960, 3rd printing November 1963, copyright 1926 (apparently [pbk.])), p. 141, citing The Johnnycake Papers (in another ed., possibly p. 233).Taylor, Coley, & Samuel Middlebrook, The Eagle Screams (N.Y.: Macaulay, 1936), p. 77 and see p. 76 (campaign of 1796), citing Nock, A. J., Jefferson. and born to a "mulatto father"B., D. S., Dim View (sidebar), in Broder, David S., Why the Candidates are Targets for Mudslingers, in The New York Times, September 27, 1964, last page of article, as accessed in ProQuest April 30, 2012, 7:15:39 p.m. (campaign in 1796). or slaveTaylor, Coley, et al., The Eagle Screams, op. cit., p. 67. and "a half-breed Indian squaw", this birth to a mulatto and an Indian allegedly "well-known in the neighbourhood where he was raised"Nock, Albert Jay, Jefferson, op. cit., p. 141, citing The Johnnycake Papers (in another ed., possibly p. 233), op. cit.. Without hyphen & "u": Taylor, Coley, et al., The Eagle Screams, op. cit., p. 77 and see p. 76, citing Nock, A. J., Jefferson. but otherwise unproven. These claims are based on damning stories from Jefferson's political opponents and are best understood as race-baiting rather than evidence about his actual lineage.
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which owns and operates Monticello, the major public history site on Jefferson, characterizes Jefferson's parents this way: "His father Peter Jefferson was a successful planter and surveyor and his mother Jane Randolph a member of one of Virginia's most distinguished families." They describe the quote in The Johnny Cake Papers as one frequently repeated, but it is attributed in written sources to the 1800 rather than the 1796 election campaign and clearly is one made by political opponents. The Johnny Cake Papers were a collection of folk tales published in 1879, not 1867, and only one tale commented on Jefferson. Dixon Wecter, in his essay "Thomas Jefferson, The Gentle Radical," discusses various portrayals of Jefferson by his political enemies and mentions that "the Jonnycake Papers later burlesqued such caricatures..."
Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson referred to an accusation that his "Mother ... [was] held to public scorn as a prostitute who intermarried with a Negro, and [that his] ... eldest brother [was] sold as a slave in Carolina."Letters from Andrew Jackson to R. K. Call, in The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 29, no. 2, April 1921, p. 191, and see p. 192 (letter dated August 16, 1828).Coyle, David Cushman, Ordeal of the Presidency (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1960), p. 127 (author graduate of Princeton & Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). Less specific was a rumor of Jackson having "colored blood", meaning having "Negro" ancestry;Both quotations: Jacobson, David J., The Affairs of Dame Rumor (N.Y.: Rinehart & Co., 1948), p. 190. this rumor was unproven. Jackson's father was born in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, in current-day Northern Ireland, around 1738.Gullan, Harold I., First Fathers: The Men Who Inspired Our Presidents (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2004; ; ; ). Retrieved January 14, 2010. Hendrik Booraem, Robert Remini, and H. W. Brands have agreed that he had no black ancestors.Hendrik Booraem, Young Hickory: The Making of Andrew Jackson (2001); Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson: The Course of American Empire, 1767–1821. Vol. 1 (1999); The Papers of Andrew Jackson. Vol. 1, 1770–1803 (1980); H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (2006).
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln's mother Nancy Hanks was claimed to be of Somali descent, but has been proven to be white.
According to historian William E. Barton, a rumor "current in various forms in several sections of the South" was that Lincoln's biological father was Abraham Enloe, which Barton dismissed as "false". According to Doug Wead, Enloe made a public boast that he was Lincoln's real father, and Thomas Lincoln allegedly fought him, biting off a piece of his nose. Another claim was that Lincoln was "part Negro",Jacobson, David J., The Affairs of Dame Rumor (N.Y.: Rinehart & Co., 1948), p. 191, Burr, Chauncey, Catechism, the latter referencing a "pamphlet by a western author adducing evidence" for the claim. but that was unproven.Sandburg, Carl, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (N.Y.: Harcourt, Brace,1928), vol. 2, p. 381 (in chap.champ;154).Coyle, David Cushman, Ordeal of the Presidency (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1960), p. 155 (author graduate of Princeton & Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). According to Lincoln's law partner William H. Herndon, Lincoln had "very dark skin",Hertz, Emanuel, The Hidden Lincoln: from the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon (N.Y.: Viking Press, February 1938), p. 413. although "his cheeks were leathery and saffron-colored",Hertz, Emanuel, The Hidden Lincoln, op. cit., p. 414. "his face was ... sallow," and "his hair was dark, almost black".Hertz, Emanuel, The Hidden Lincoln, op. cit., p. 414 and see p. 413 ("dark hair"). Around 1838–39, Abraham Lincoln described himself as a "long black fellow",Shaw, Archer H., compiler & ed., The Lincoln Encyclopedia: The Spoken and Written Words of A. Lincoln Arranged For Ready Reference (N.Y.: Macmillan, 1950), p. 190, entry Lincoln, Abraham, personal description of (To Josephus Hewett, February 13, 1848, I, 355) ("nearly ten years ago" thus ca. 1838–'39). and his "complexion" in 1859 as "dark",Both quotations: Shaw, Archer H., compiler & ed., The Lincoln Encyclopedia, op. cit. (To F. W. Fell, December 20, 1859, V, 288). but whether he meant either in an ancestral sense is unknown. The anti-Lincoln Charleston Mercury described him as being "of ... the dirtiest complexion",Taylor, Coley, & Samuel Middlebrook, The Eagle Screams, op. cit., p. 106 and see p. 109. as part of anti-abolitionist race-baiting. Rumors of Lincoln's alleged black racial heritage are considered unsubstantiated and have not been acknowledged by historians.
Warren G. Harding Warren G. Harding was said to have African ancestry; one claim was by his political opponent William Estabrook Chancellor, a controversial and racist historian, who said that Harding's father was a mulatto, and that Harding's great-grandmother was black. During Harding's campaign, Democratic opponents spread rumors that Harding's great-great-grandfather was a West Indian black, and that other blacks might be found in his family tree.Russell, Francis, The Shadow of Blooming Grove–Warren G. Harding In His Times (Easton Press, 1962; ), p. 372. Chancellor publicized rumors, based on supposed family research but perhaps reflecting no more than local gossip.Russell, Francis, The Shadow of Blooming Grove, op. cit., pp. 403–405. In an era when the "one-drop rule" would classify a person with any African ancestry as black, and black people in the South had been effectively disenfranchised, Harding's campaign manager responded, "no family in the state (of Ohio) has a clearer, a more honorable record than the Hardings', a blue-eyed stock from New England and Pennsylvania, the finest pioneer blood."Russell, Francis, The Shadow of Blooming Grove, op. cit., p. 404. "Many biographers have dismissed the rumors of Harding's mixed-race family as little more than a political scandal and Chancellor himself as a Democratic mudslinger and racist ideologue." According to Chancellor, Harding got his only academic degree from Iberia College, which had been "founded to educate fugitive slaves".Murphy, P. (1993), Making the Connections: Women, Work, and Abuse. PMD Press, p. xxxi. The college was founded by abolitionist supporters in the Presbyterian Church in Ohio for students of both sexes and all races.
The rumors may have been sustained by a statement Harding allegedly made to newspaperman James W. Faulkner on the subject, which he perhaps meant to be dismissive: "How do I know, Jim? One of my ancestors may have jumped the fence."Adams, Samuel Hopkins, Incredible Era: The Life and Times of Warren Gamaliel Harding (Houghton Mifflin, 1939; ), p. 280. However, while there are gaps in the historical record, studies of his family tree have not found evidence of an African-American ancestor.
Genetic testing of Harding's descendants in 2015 determined, with more than a 95% percent chance of accuracy, that he lacked sub-Saharan African forebears within four previous generations.
Calvin Coolidge