The African-American heritage of United States presidents is a topic on one President with African-American heritage and is a disputed topic relating primarily to six other Presidents who identified as white and were commonly considered part of European-American society. The academic consensus of historians rejects most of the specific claims below that the men may have had some African ancestry, the consensus acknowledging the long history of interracial relations in the United States.
President Barack Obama had a Kenyan father and an American mother of Northern European ancestry.
Read more about African-American Heritage Of United States Presidents: Background, Significance of Claims, John Hanson
Famous quotes containing the words heritage, united, states and/or presidents:
“It seems to me that upbringings have themes. The parents set the theme, either explicitly or implicitly, and the children pick it up, sometimes accurately and sometimes not so accurately.... The theme may be “Our family has a distinguished heritage that you must live up to” or “No matter what happens, we are fortunate to be together in this lovely corner of the earth” or “We have worked hard so that you can have the opportunities we didn’t have.””
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“We are told to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and what is laid down in those constitutions?... Certain great fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and ... all laws of man’s making which trample on these ideas, are null and void—wrong to obey, right to disobey. The Constitution of the United States recognizes human slavery; and makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.”
—Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842–1932)
“A little group of wilful men reflecting no opinion but their own have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency. The people are well cured by then of election fever, during which they think they are choosing Moses. In the third year, they look on the man as a sinner and a bumbler and begin to poke around for rumours of another Messiah.”
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