Best and worst presidents for Indians

This Presidents’ Day, We Highlight the Best Presidents for Indian Country

By Rob CapricciosoRichard M. Nixon: He’s the president who’s not usually on anyone’s best list, but for Indian country, he was a champion. Changing course on many of the policies that had driven so many Indians into bleak poverty, Nixon, with the guidance of his Mohawk Indian affairs leader Louis R. Bruce, endorsed a self-determination plan for tribes, ushering in a new era for Natives.

Barack Obama: It’s taken this “One Who Helps People Throughout the Land”–his adopted Crow name–just three years to show that he’s seriously committed to taking action on Indian issues, brokering passage of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act reauthorization, the Tribal Law and Order Act, and the $3.4 billion Cobell settlement.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: His New Deal will never be forgotten. For Natives, it included the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which ended the sale of tribal lands and restored ownership of unallocated lands to Native American groups. The policy helped reverse the Dawes Act’s infamous privatization of communal holdings of tribes, while returning to tribal self-governance.

Bill Clinton: He set a model for Obama, hiring Natives to work in his administration, and holding meetings with tribal leaders at the White House—both areas that the current president has taken the ball and run with. And he made some memorable commitments.

Ulysses S. Grant: This blast from the presidential past reminds us that good intentions were sometimes present in American history toward Indians—but that good federal intentions were and are not always the best for tribal interests.

Worth noting:

George H.W. Bush: When he signed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act into law in 1990, it was a pretty progressive move, especially when compared to his son who would later leave most things Indian alone.

John F. Kennedy: JFK and his brothers, Bobby and Teddy, are remembered fondly by many Natives due to their push for Indian education initiatives, as well as Bobby’s campaign visit to Pine Ridge Reservation in 1968 just before his assassination.

Jimmy Carter: He signed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act into law in 1979, saying, “It is a fundamental right of every American, as guaranteed by the first amendment of the Constitution, to worship as he or she pleases.”Indian-Killer Andrew Jackson Deserves Top Spot on List of Worst U.S. Presidents

By Gale Courey Toensing and ICTMN StaffAndrew Jackson: A man nicknamed “Indian killer” and “Sharp Knife” surely deserves the top spot on a list of worst U.S. Presidents.

Andrew Jackson “was a forceful proponent of Indian removal,” according to PBS. Others have a less genteel way of describing the seventh president of the United States.

Dwight Eisenhower: President Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II hero who served as President from 1953 until 1961, was an early advocate of consultation. On August 15, 1953, he signed into law H.R. 1063, which came to be known as Public Act 280, because he believed it would help forward “complete political equality to all Indians in our nation.”

George W. Bush: While George W. Bush was one of three presidents since 1995 to issue proclamations designating November as National American Indian Heritage Month, his understanding of tribal sovereignty is limited.

Abraham Lincoln: The majority of the United States knows Lincoln as the president who “cannot tell a lie,” and as the leader of the Emancipation Proclamation. However, if you were to ask Native Americans their perception of the great president, the image would be much darker.

Ulysses S. Grant: Grant made it on our ‘Best’ Presidents list as well. Mostly because his intentions were in the right place and something that hadn’t been seen in that time. But those good intentions can’t save him from the fact of the matter.Andrew Jackson--The Worst President The Cherokee Ever Met

By Christina BerryThe title of worst US president is hotly debated and is most often awarded to Andrew Johnson or Warren Harding. Many polls and studies rank Andrew Jackson in or near the top 10 best presidents. However, to many Cherokees Andrew Jackson is without a doubt the worst US president.Comment:  For more on the presidents, see George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama.

Happy Presidents Day 2011!

Two weeks ago some Lakota Indians protested a "Wizard of Oz" play because of L. Frank Baum's editorials 120 years ago. Their goal is apparently to banish The Wizard of Oz from our culture to teach Baum a lesson. Too bad he's been dead for 96 years and probably won't get the message.

In their honor, I posted the following suggestion on Facebook for Presidents Day: Let's also remove the anti-Indian presidents from our currency, Mt. Rushmore, the history books, etc.This led to a brief discussion:Rob, let's not forget that the slaughter of indigenous peoples, or the slavery of "lesser" people has been the cornerstone to this fine democracy--which recognizes the rights of all men (women excluded for obvious reasons...wink wink).That's why we need to eliminate these presidents!While you're at it let's not forget those 38 warriors who died by hanging in the largest mass hanging in the history of the US, their death warrant signed by none other than "Honest" Abe Lincoln.I'm including Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and T. Roosevelt among the presidents to be eliminated along with Baum.OK. Can we then replace Andrew Jackson on the twenty with Richard Nixon?Yes, we can put Nixon on the $20 for his support of indigenous rights. Right after we remove The Wizard of Oz from every bookstore and DVD store.

For more on the subject, see Liberation Day, not Presidents Day and Fun Fourth of July Facts.

P.S. Needless to say, neither the presidents nor Baum's beloved children's story are going anywhere anytime soon. Protesting them is roughly equivalent to protesting the ocean's tides.

Lincoln: "Public sentiment is everything"

Vision:  How We Can Beat Conservatives With Progressive Culture

Culture is where people make sense of the world, where ideas are introduced and emotions are attached to concrete change. Let's bring it into our political cause.

By Jeff Chang and Brian Komar[A]s progressives watched Democrats suffer the worst election loss since the Republican collapse of 1948, they seemed to be back where they started. Just as in 2004, many have blamed the losses on ineffective Democratic campaign messaging. The problem, however, runs much deeper. Electoral and Beltway politics are episodic, short-term, and transactional. Movements, however, are long-term. "Public sentiment is everything," Abraham Lincoln once said. "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed." In other words, movements must change hearts and minds in an enduring way. They must change the culture.

Culture is the space in our national consciousness filled by music, books, sports, movies, theater, visual arts, and media. It is the realm of ideas, images, and stories--the narrative in which we are immersed every day. It is where people make sense of the world, where ideas are introduced, values are inculcated, and emotions are attached to concrete change. Cultural change is often the dress rehearsal for political change. Or put in another way, political change is the final manifestation of cultural shifts that have already occurred. Jackie Robinson's 1947 Major League Baseball debut preceded Brown v. Board of Education by seven years. Ellen DeGeneres' coming-out on her TV sitcom preceded the first favorable court ruling on same-sex marriage by eight years. Until progressives make culture an integral and intentional part of their theory of change, they will not be able to compete effectively against conservatives.And:Cultural strategy is not about agitprop, benefit concerts, and lapel buttons; those are tactics, sometimes useful, sometimes terrible. When artists tell new stories, they can shift the culture and make new politics possible--cultural strategy is about understanding that fact and empowering artists to do what they do best.

Take Moises Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project's play, The Laramie Project. The play helped organize support nationally for the introduction and final passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. It tied emotion to a tangible vehicle for change. Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, did more to spark broad and deep action on climate change than Gore did as vice president. The movie framed the facts in cascading images that illustrated the stakes of political failure, reaching through the histrionic media environment to win new audiences. These projects also highlighted values--inclusion, sustainability, the right to live free of violence, the common global good--that point to a progressive agenda. When such values are promoted in the culture, they are normalized. They become core American values.

A new cultural majority--an emerging American public that is the most demographically diverse ever and predisposed to support a progressive agenda, a public that elected Obama in 2008 but mostly stayed home in 2010--is still out there. But it is not being reached by progressives' formal infrastructure. Meanwhile, the right is constantly working in the culture to fragment it. During periods of economic and social upheaval, people seek a way of making sense of the chaos that surrounds them. Caught in the storm, they desire comfort and strength. Conservatives address this by pulling people backward to an imagined past. Progressives prepare people to come together to face the coming world. Culture is where they can instill faith.Comment:  This is a great statement about the power of the arts and entertainment. It's why I laugh at people like Michael Cooke who push a false choice between fighting poverty and making art. As the examples above suggest, the arts are a vital and perhaps necessary part of instigating change.

This is what I'm trying to do with my comic books, website and blog, and other creative projects. Challenging false and stereotypical notions, highlighting Indians and Indian lore in our culture, reiterating that Indians are real people who are definitely still here. Influencing beliefs and opinions is what it's all about because, as Lincoln said, "Public sentiment is everything."

If someone gave me $10 million and said I could 1) spend it directly on poor Indians or 2) make a movie about Indians with a nationwide distribution deal, I'd probably opt for the latter. The first would provide a short-term fix for thousands of people but wouldn't do anything to change their long-term situation. The second might persuade people to take Indians and their rights and wrongs seriously. That kind of mental shift would benefit Indians long after the $10 million was gone.

For more on the subject, see:

Why pop culture matters
Movies convey "America's master narrative"
"What Americans know...comes from movies"
The influence of movies

Tecumseh's presidential curse

I've heard of the so-called 20-year presidential curse before, but not that it was attributed to Tecumseh. Here's the scoop:

Curse of TippecanoeThe term Curse of Tippecanoe (also known as Tecumseh's curse, the presidential curse, zero-year curse, the twenty-year curse, or the twenty-year presidential jinx) is sometimes used to describe the pattern where from 1840 to 1960 each American President who had won election in a year ending in zero (such as 1880 or 1900) died in office. The pattern ended with Ronald Reagan, who won the presidential election in 1980, but did not subsequently die in office.

The curse

The curse, first widely noted in a Ripley's Believe It or Not book published in 1931, began with the death of William Henry Harrison, who died in 1841 after having been elected in 1840. For the next 120 years, presidents elected during years ending in a zero (occurring every 20 years) ultimately died while serving in office, from Harrison to John F. Kennedy (elected 1960, died 1963).Tecumseh’s Curse and the Death of President Bush

By Ken KalbThere was a deep mystical tradition among the Shawnee Indians of the Ohio valley, embodied in the teachings and practices of a sage called "the Prophet," emboldened by his brother, the great Chief Tecumseh. Tecumseh felt that all Indians were one people, and insisted that only with the consent of all--could land rightly be ceded by or purchased from an individual tribe. For several years, he successfully journeyed from tribe to tribe, working with Indians of all sections to secure their cooperation in this great work of unification. Tecumseh was a daring visionary--a powerful orator, remarkable military chief, successful negotiator, and enthusiastic leader. Indeed, the flame of hatred for the white man burned in his heart, and he swore eternal vengeance against the white race for decimating his proud nation.

When the United States refused to recognize Tecumseh’s unification principle, he bound together the Native Americans of the Old Northwest, the South, and the Eastern Mississippi Valley as a military force to defend Native American rights to the land. His plan failed with the defeat of his brother, the Shawnee Prophet, at the battle of Tippecanoe in 1811. Although history reports the battle of Tippecanoe a draw, it nevertheless broke the power of the Shawnee, and became known historically as marking the collapse of the Native American military movement.

Legend transmits that after the historic battle of Tippecanoe, Tecumseh released prisoners with a prophetic message for General William Henry Harrison--a prophecy that has come to be known as--"Tecumseh's Curse."A Plague on Your White House

The presidents killed by a Native American curse

By Nick ParkinsLegend tells that the wrathful chieftain now uttered a dire prophetic forewarning:

“Harrison will not win this year to be the Great Chief. But he may win next year. If he does… He will not finish his term. He will die in his office. You think that I have lost my powers. I who caused the Sun to darken and Red Men to give up firewater… I tell you Harrison will die. And after him every Great Chief chosen every 20 years thereafter will die. And when each one dies, let everyone remember the death of our people.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, accounts of the curse’s origin conflict. Some say it was born out of the defeat at Tippe­canoe; others claim that it was some time later, and that under the shadow of Tecumseh’s death the following year at the Battle of the Thames, it was Tenskwatawa who uttered the fateful words. The confusion doesn’t end there. Some say the curse is simply nonsense and that no records exist that support the existence of such a native Indian jinx. What is not in doubt is that the sinister malediction came to pass.Comment:  So the "curse" may be a folktale someone made up decades after the fact...but it came true? Wrong. The curse didn't come true unless it existed in the first place, before Harrison's death, which no one can prove.

The Tecumseh book A Sorrow in Our Heart doesn't mention the curse. Author Allan Eckert has hundreds of pages of footnotes documenting how reliable each of his claims is. If he didn't think the curse was worth mentioning, you can bet there's no evidence Tecumseh uttered it.

As for the string of deaths, they're easily explained by mathematics. If you look at the series of American presidents, you literally can find millions of patterns. Maybe every fifth president was left-handed. Or every sixth president had a cat. Or every seventh president liked broccoli. And so forth and so on.

Let's say each of these patterns has only a one in a million chance of coming true. But there are at least a million of them. Therefore, it's almost certain that one of the million-to-one patterns will come true. The 20-year "curse" happened to be the one.

If it hadn't been this pattern, it would've been something else. For instance, every third president had a mailman named Mr. Brown. It's a coincidence, nothing more.

For more on Tecumseh, see 37th Outdoor Tecumseh Play and Freemasons, Washington, and Tecumseh.

Pardon the Mankato 38?

Execution 150 Years Ago Spurs Calls for Pardon

By Robert K. ElderOn Dec. 26, 1862, thirty-eight doomed Dakota Indians wailed and danced atop the gallows, waiting for the trapdoors to drop beneath them. The square scaffold, built here to accommodate the largest mass execution in United States history, swayed under their weight.

An engraving depicting the scene of the mass execution of 38 Dakota Indians on Dec. 26, 1862.

“It seemed that the purpose of the singing and dancing was only to sustain each other in their last ordeal,” a witness observed. “As the last moment rapidly approached, they each called out their name and shouted in their native language: ‘I’m here! I’m here!’”

Thirty-seven of the men were among the “most ferocious” followers of the Dakota leader Little Crow, according to the federal government. They stood accused of killing approximately 490 settlers, including women and children, in raids along the Minnesota frontier.

But one man, historians say, did not belong there. A captured Dakota named We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee, often called Chaska, had had his sentence commuted by President Abraham Lincoln days earlier. Yet on the day after Christmas 1862, Chaska died with the others.

It was a case of wrongful execution, Gary C. Anderson, a history professor at the University of Oklahoma and Little Crow biographer, said last week in an interview. “These soldiers just grabbed the wrong guy,” he said.

Although the story of the mass execution in Mankato is well-known locally, scholars say the case of Chaska—spared by Lincoln, then wrongfully executed—has been long overlooked by the federal government and all but forgotten even by the Dakota.

Now, an effort to keep the story alive is taking root on campuses and even on Capitol Hill as the 150th anniversary of the execution, in 2012, approaches. Commemorative events will include symposiums, museum exhibits, monument re-dedications, book publications and an original symphony and choral production.Comment:  The article discusses the possible pardon of only one of the 38 men hanged. It doesn't go into whether the others deserve a pardon also.

Below a website discusses the problems with their convictions, including the most obvious one: whether the Dakota were members of a sovereign nation fighting a war against the US.

How Fair Were the Dakota Conflict Trials?Did the Commission allow adequate time to consider the evidence?

The order creating the Commission said that it was to"try summarily the mulatto, mixed bloods, and Indians engaged in the sioux raids and massacres." And try summarily it did. The Commission conducted 393 trials over a six-week period. On the last day alone, the Commission heard and decided nearly forty cases. The rapidity of trials increased over time.

Should the accused have been provided with counsel?

The Sixth Amendment guarantees to defendants in criminal trials the right to assistance of counsel, but Henry Sibley was of the view that the right did not apply in trials before military commissions. Sibley and the Commission turned down the only request for counsel that was made.

Were the verdicts supported by the evidence?

Most of those convicted undoubtedly committed acts described in their specifications and thus, if one assumes that the acts specified constitute crimes deserving of punishment, most were guilty. In many instances, however, the crime alleged was mere participation in a battle, so that evidence that the defendant fired a shot, supplied ammunition, or in any other way significantly aided in the combat was enough to earn him a death sentence. Mitigating evidence, such as the fact that the defendant may have prevented a rape or a murder, was generally ignored.

Were Commission members prejudiced against the accused?

The members of the Commission were all military men and local residents. The men they were asked to pass judgment on were in many cases the same men that had attacked them and their troops. One of the Commission's members, William Marshall, frankly admitted his own difficulty in viewing the evidence impartially: "[my] mind was not in a condition to give the men a fair trial."

Should the accused have been viewed as legitimate belligerents of a sovereign nation rather than as common criminals?

The use of force by individuals in a declared war between sovereign nations is generally not subject to the same treatment as would similar acts of assault or murder committed by individuals under different circumstances. Captured enemy soldiers are treated as legitimate belligerents and held as prisoners of war until hostilities cease and they are released.

Was the Commission authorized by law to conduct the trials?

The Supreme Court in 1857 upheld certain uses of military commissions, but lower court interpretations of the Court's opinion have limited commissions to situations where they were the result of military necessity. Although Minnesota was certainly going through a turbulent time in 1862, civil authority was never interrupted. State courts continued to operate and process criminal cases, and presumably could have processed charges against participants in the Dakota Conflict as well.For more on the subject, see Preview of Dakota 38 and Jerry Fogg's Mankato 62.

Below:  "An engraving depicting the scene of the mass execution of 38 Dakota Indians on Dec. 26, 1862."

Preview of Dakota 38

'Dakota 38' movie documents U.S. hanging of Lakota Indians

The West Coast debut is scheduled Thursday for the documentary film "Dakota 38," at Seattle University's Pigott Auditorium

By Lynda V. Mapes"Dakota 38," the rough cut, will be presented Thursday evening for its first West Coast public screening, hosted by Seattle University.

The film was inspired by Lakota spiritual leader Jim Miller, who in the spring of 2005 had a dream in which he rode 330 miles on horseback. He eventually came to a riverbank in Mankato, Minn., where he saw 38 of his own ancestors hanged. He soon discovered that he had dreamed of the actual largest mass hanging in the United States, ordered by President Lincoln in 1862.

In December 2008, Jim and others retraced the route of his dream on horseback in an effort to bring healing and reconciliation to all. "Dakota 38" is a feature-length documentary film by Smooth Feather Productions that tells the story of the 330-mile journey. To see a trailer, go online to smoothfeather.org/dakota38.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Jerry Fogg's Mankato 62 and Art Exhibit on Minn. Statehood.

"Product of his time" = rationalization

JRey Crow responds to my Custer Just a Product of His Time? posting:Exactly, Rob. People who take this approach usually don't know their history too well.

It is simply not the case that war, slavery, conquest and colonization came first and the objections only much later.

I suspect that just about every time someone was about to do something evil to another person in the presence of witnesses, there was someone who objected.

These things are not and never have been about "reason" or justice or any genuine belief that the oppressors are doing "god's work"--it is about greed, money, power and control.

I like to think of the example of Lincoln--it makes the US as a political unit look much better to "forget" that Lincoln was not willing to wage Civil War to emancipate anyone--he did so to preserve the union. At least Lincoln was honest about his motives and limits in that regard, but we "need" to remember the situation falsely to feel better about ourselves collectively.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Those Evil Europeans.

Robot Lincoln vs. Zombie Jackson

Joshua Jones reviews a Web comic featuring Abraham Lincoln as a robot vs. Andrew Jackson as a zombie. As Jones notes,the resurrected Lincoln is sent on a mission:

Web comic review:  Wilson and Garrett's Zombie JacksonAndrew Jackson has been transformed into a zombie due to a long overdue Native American curse (Jackson was already a monster, he's just an undead monster now), and Robot Lincoln is charged with the task of delivering a serum that will quench Zombie Jackson's ghoulish appetite.

Upon arriving at The Hermitage, Robot Lincoln faces off against a small army of zombies, and eventually confronts the undead ex-prez in mortal combat minus the fatality. Jackson is portrayed as unreasonable, violent, and he comes across as a simple minded savage. In that respect, the comic gets a nod for accuracy.

Comment:  Other than the one line about the curse, there's no mention of Jackson's Indian-killing past in the comic itself. Jones the reviewer says more about it than the comic does.

In this obvious fantasy situation, using an "Indian curse" is relatively harmless. It's also relatively unnecessary. Jackson doesn't say anything suggestive like, "Those damn Indians finally got their revenge on me." The curse exists without context or commentary.

Jackson could be a zombie because he encountered a strange glowing meteor. Or because he inhaled a strange mix of swamp gases. There's no need or reason to invoke Indian "black magic." The creators have done it simply because it's the thing to do. If you need a supernatural effect and you can't explain it any other way, you can always blame it on an Indian curse or burial ground.

Anyway, the Web comic's story and art are simple but effective. I wouldn't pay $3.00 for it, but it's worth a few minutes to read it free online. If you're curious, check it out.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Comics.

Lincoln and the "Idahoax"

Western states remembering Abe Lincoln, too"Lincoln had an enormous impact in the West–even though he never stepped foot in what are now the mountain West and far West states," said Syd Nathans, a chairman of Colorado's Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission.

In 1860, Lincoln defeated Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, who advocated "popular sovereignty" in which Western states could decide for themselves whether to allow slave labor. Lincoln's presidential victory assured there would be no formal expansion of slavery into the far West.

After war broke out, the West was forged by the conflict thousands of miles away. Gold from California and Colorado, and silver from Nevada, bankrolled the Union's efforts. In Hawaii, sugar cane plantations replaced a commercial whaling industry as whaling ships were diverted to the fight and northerners looked for a non-Confederate sugar supply.

Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act, which led to the completion of the nation's first Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory, Utah, in 1869; the Homestead Act, which ultimately opened 1.6 million homesteads in the West; and the Morrill Land Grant Colleges Act, setting up public land-grant universities such as the first University of California in Berkeley.

Lincoln appointed Idaho's first territorial governor and signed off on the name "Idaho," thought at the time to come from a Shoshone Indian word meaning "gem of the mountains." Historians now say the name has no such origin and was simply made up by a lobbyist, a claim known as the "Idahoax."Wiki: IdahoIdaho is the only state that was possibly named as the result of a hoax (the so-called "Idahoax") although this is disputed. In the early 1860s, when the United States Congress was considering organizing a new territory in the Rocky Mountains, eccentric lobbyist George M. Willing suggested the name "Idaho," which he claimed was derived from a Shoshone language term meaning "the sun comes from the mountains" or "gem of the mountains." Willing later claimed that he had made up the name himself. Congress ultimately decided to name the area Colorado Territory when it was created in February 1861.

However, the name "Idaho" did not go away. The same year Congress created Colorado Territory, a county called Idaho County was created in eastern Washington Territory. The county was named after a steamship named Idaho, which was launched on the Columbia River in 1860. It is unclear whether the steamship was named before or after Willing's claim was revealed. Regardless, a portion of Washington Territory, including Idaho County, was used to create Idaho Territory in 1863.

Despite this lack of evidence for the origin of the name, many textbooks well into the 20th century repeated as fact Willing's account that the name "Idaho" derived from the Shoshone term "ee-da-how."Comment:  I hadn't heard of the "Idahoax" until now.

Other than the mention of the Shoshone Indian word, the first article doesn't mention Indians. Interesting how people and agencies and the media talk about Lincoln uncritically. The first transcontinental railroad and the Homestead Act...wow. Thanks for furthering the conquest of America's Indian nations, Abe.

For more on the subject, see The Real Emancipator (of Indian Land).

Our black and Indian presidents

Barack Obama--America's 6th Black President?Joel A. Rogers and Dr. Auset Bakhufu have both written books documenting that at least five former presidents of the United States had Black people among their ancestors. If one considers the fact that European men far outnumbered European women during the founding of this country, and that the rape and impregnation of an African female slave was not considered a crime, it is even more surprising that these two authors could not document Black ancestors among an ever larger number of former presidents.

The president's names include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding, and Calvin Coolidge.

The best case for Black ancestry is against Warren G. Harding, our 29th president from 1921 until 1923. Harding himself never denied his ancestry. When Republican leaders called on Harding to deny the "Negro" history, he said, "How should I know whether or not one of my ancestors might have jumped the fence." William Chancellor, a White professor of economics and politics at Wooster College in Ohio, wrote a book on the Harding family genealogy and identified Black ancestors among both parents of President Harding.

Andrew Jackson was our 7th president from 1829 to 1837. The Virginia Magazine of History Volume 29 says that Jackson was the son of a White woman from Ireland who had intermarried with a Negro. The magazine also said that his eldest brother had been sold as a slave in Carolina. Joel Rogers says that Andrew Jackson Sr. died long before President Andrew Jackson Jr. was born. He says the president's mother then went to live on the Crawford farm where there were Negro slaves and that one of these men was Andrew Jr's father.

Thomas Jefferson was our 3rd president from 1801 to 1809. 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." In his book entitled "The Slave Children of Thomas Jefferson," Samuel Sloan wrote that Jefferson destroyed all of the papers, portraits, and personal effects of his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, when she died on March 31, 1776.

Abraham Lincoln was our 16th president from 1861 to 1865. J. A. Rogers quotes Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, as saying that Abraham Lincoln was the illegitimate son of an African man. William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, said that Lincoln had very dark skin and coarse hair and that his mother was from an Ethiopian tribe. In Herndon's book entitled "The Hidden Lincoln" he says that Thomas Lincoln could not have been Abraham Lincoln's father because he was sterile from childhood mumps and was later castrated. Lincoln's presidential opponents made cartoon drawings depicting him as a Negro and nicknamed him "Abraham Africanus the First."

Calvin Coolidge was our 30th president, and he succeeded Warren Harding. He proudly admitted that his mother was dark because of mixed Indian ancestry. However, Dr. Bakhufu says that by 1800 the New England Indian was hardly any longer pure Indian, because they had mixed so often with Blacks. Calvin Coolidge's mother's maiden name was "Moor." In Europe the name "Moor" was given to all Black people just as the name Negro was used in America.Comment:  For more on the subject, see Fun 4th of July Facts.