So, in our last series, we stopped at Theodore “It’s a White World and You Just Live in It” Roosevelt. His term ended in 1909 after serving two terms starting in 1901. His last term ended 31 years after the end of Reconstruction. Since we have covered Reconstruction throughout this series, I am not going to say much about it except that it was the primary means after the Civil War for African Americans to level the playing field after 400 years of slavery. It lasted from 1865 to 1877. After the withdrawal of the last Union troops from the South in a political maneuver known as the “Great Betrayal,” Reconstruction collapsed and it left us at the mercy of some really, really salty white folks, who had lost everything in the war. I mean take for instance in the Battle of Vicksburg, the white folks there were forced to eating rats and living in caves above the city while Grant shelled it without mercy in a 40-day siege. Meanwhile, the former slaves who had lived there were lounging on the banks of Mississippi with Grant and his men watching it all burn down while eating fried chicken, drinking grape soda and talking shat. The racist use to say that every once and a while they would see a nigra go to the gunners and tell them to aim the canon a little to the left or right because they missed a one. Blackman: “You see him…? There he is… he’s under that porch eating rat ass…” So yeah, those white folks were a little bit salty and swore to gawd that when the troops left the South… the “Great Betrayal” was going to turn into the “Great Ass Whopping!”.
Can’t We All Get Along…
Anywho, the early twentieth century and I’m talking about the first twenty years of the 1900s was payback time. Now you heard the saying that mama didn’t raise any fools, right? Well, she didn’t raise any back then either. Just before the Great Ass Whopping, there was the “Great Migration.” Hundreds of thousands of blacks left the south and over the next few decades that number would turn into millions. Now that’s not to say that those who stayed were fools. Many could not leave because of family obligations, or they lacked the resources to move. Others stayed because they weren’t about to let the racist chase them from their homes. So, although a lot is said about the migration and the millions that left the South, most stayed. Blackman: “That’s right!! That’s a picture of my granddad by that cannon!!”
So, the early part of the 20th century was terrible if you were black, doubly so if you lived down south. It was during this era that the Red Summer went down. I was looking to see if there was an article I had written specifically about the Red Summer, but it looks like I have mentioned it many times before but have not done an article specifically on it. I’ll take care of that soon. In the meantime, here is an article I did about an incident that happened during the Red Summer in of all places Duluth, Minnesota. So, the Red Summer was a period in 1919 where thousands of white supremacists in several major cities in the United States lost their minds. Now some of the most notable crazy happened in the North in cities like Chicago, Washington D.C., and New York. Crazy because now that we have left the South, you gonna come up here and faque with a moe? When the tally was taken in those cities, it was just as many racist as black folks walking around with bullet holes in them. Those riots only lasted a day or two. In other places where blacks did not defend themselves as vigorously, well those riots went on for days. Only after blacks started defending themselves in those cities and racist start showing up in ER rooms, did the governors in those states start talking about everybody getting along and putting this shat behind us. So now that we have talked about the period where our next 100 plus years of the presidents and civil rights will start, let’s begin…
Here is the scale:
10 – You can sit next to the table and watch while we play a couple of hands of bid whisk.
9 – You are able to use the word “Bro” in front of us.”
8 – You can bring something to the barbecue, and we’ll put it on the table with the other food.
7 – We will wave at you if we see you on the street.
6 – We won’t side-eye or sass if you bring a watermelon to our family dinner.
5 – You can leave with a little bit of your dignity after saying “My Nigga.”
4 – If we hear you calling for help, we will call the police after we have charged our phone.
3 – We will count to three before we let the dogs out if you come to our house.
2 – We won’t pee on your statue during daylight hours.
1 – Faque Off!!
0 – Special Use (added later for you know who.)
A Few Good Men
So, in our last series, “By The Numbers- The Conclusion,” the overall score for all the presidents was a “4.” I thought that was too generous a score seeing that for over 400 years half of the presidents of the United States let the racist beat the black off of us. So, I split them into two groups, those with scores over five and those who had scores below “5.” Using that formula, the last group of presidents had an overall score of “3”, the good guys came out with a “4,” and the bad guys came out with a “1”. That seemed like it was more equitable seeing that for the first 100 years of the presidency they let us stay in bondage. So, we are going to do the same with this last and final group, which will take us to 2023.
Overall the presidents in this group scored a “5,” – You can leave with a little bit of your dignity after saying “My Nigga.” Now let’s break it down. The good guys a “4” – “If we hear you calling for help, we will call the police after we have charged our phone.” I sort of figured they would come in around “4” or so and that’s a good place, because although they did some remarkable things for civil rights, for over 60 years we were relegated to second class citizenship, fighting for everything other Americans took for granted. Now for the bad guys… welp they got a “.95.” Yep, they fell below “1.” I expected that too, because they stood by and some even joined in and led the ugly racist in their bid to hold down other Americans because of their skin color. I can’t even believe I am still writing about prejudices concerning skin color after more than fifty centuries have passed since civilization began. I mean that’s some ancient medieval shat right there… judging someone based on their skin color. We ought to make racist wear nothing but a loin cloth and hunt for their food in the woods with a bow and arrow. Anyway, I’m standing behind my numbers because of men like Warren Harding, who only was in office for only a year, but who was on every racist “He’s Next” list in the country because of his stance on civil rights and particularly his stance on lynching. Now, no black man who is writing about presidents and African Americans should overlook Calvin Coolidge. In his inaugural address he put it right out there in part saying… “Numbered among our population are some 12,000,000 colored people. Under our Constitution, their rights are just as sacred as those of any other citizen.” It was an astounding statement given the fact that under the previous administration more than 25,000 Klans had been allowed to march in front of the White House and that the government was riddled with Klansmen and supporters, while nearly 10 percent of the population were active card-carrying cross burners! Yessiree, mentioning black folks in your presidential inaugural address was some mighty dangerous “they said he jumped out the window…” stuff back then… and who could forget Franklin Roosevelt and his “New Deal” which kicked off the beginnings of the black middle class. His policies put more food on black tables during the Great Depression than a Popeyes on Super Bowl Day. Now let’s talk about the little guy… Harry Truman. Truman was the one who dropped the bomb on them… I mean the original bomb… that’s why I gave him a nine. He signed Executive Order 9981, ending segregation in the military in 1946. The last segregated company disbanded in 1954. It was those soldiers who help spread the word about equality across black communities. He was followed up by another great supporter, Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike did a lot of things in office supporting civil rights, but the main thing he did was putting the people on the Supreme Court who knocked down Plessey v. Fergurson and replaced it with Brown v. Board of Education. Plessey legalized segregation and Brown made it illegal. He also signed the Civil Right Act of 1957 establishing the civil rights department in the DOJ. I gave this man a ten because he deserves it. He is one of three men I gave a ten in this 120-year period, those being Coolidge, Roosevelt, and the next man we are going to talk about, John F. Kennedy. JFK was the catalyst for putting civil rights on the front page. His partnership with Dr. Martin Luther King was the match that lit the civil rights movement, and his death was the explosion that fanned the flames nationwide. Killed by a white man in Dallas, Texas, in broad daylight was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now history says Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist sympathizer. They better say that, because if they said he was a white supremacist, then it was a real possibility that we could have seen another civil war. They never talked about Lee Harvy Oswald having a brother named Robert Edward Oswald, and his father’s name was Robert Lee Oswald. Nope, never mentioned it at all that the three men were named in honor of Robert E. Lee, commanding general of the Confederate Army. I will let you decide if he was racist or not. It would be another 10 years before another advocate for civil rights would sit in the oval office, his name is Gerald R. Ford. If you noticed I used the word advocate instead of supporter. Ford was the kind of president who would invite you to the BBQ, but you couldn’t sit at the table with the white folks. He did appoint the second black man to hold a cabinet seat, William Coleman as Transportation Secretary and historically Coleman was only the second black cabinet member in American history, but that wasn’t because he was supporting blacks, it was because he was supporting Republicans and needed the black vote. Still, he didn’t do any harm and that’s why he made it to the other side of “5”. Ford lost to a man who I personally thought was a great human being, but a poor president, James Carter. I gave Jimmy Carter a “9” because he wasn’t always into supporting African American causes. I mean the dude was from Georgia. Before he got into politics, he was a peanut farmer, and you are not going to sell that many peanuts in “Hang A Nigra By The Toe”, Georgia, if you are supporting African Americans causes. The other thing is Jimmy was a state representative before he went into national politics. You don’t become a state representative unless you know something… like the four golden words… ” Make it happen nigra…” Other than that, once he got into office, he was our main man, placing blacks in high positions and supporting all manner of civil rights legislation. Then we got George “Teflon” Bush Jr., who slipped pass the halfway decent mark with a “6”. So, George got on the right side of the tracks by appointing the country’s first and second black Secretary Of State, a position which was third in the line of succession to the president after the Vice President, if they could not perform their duties. He also appointed the first minority Attorney General, who was 5th in the line of succession to the president. No person of color had ever had that much power in the Executive Branch until George W. Bush. Finally, we have to talk about Barack Obama. I took him out of the scale I used for the other presidents as he didn’t fit in that category. I basically put him on a scale between 1-4, with 1 being the highest. Obama scored a 2. Ain’t too much to say about the first black president except what I said in his article. He did what he could for us in plain sight and he did some shat for us that was out of sight. I thought putting Eric Holder in as the Attorney General in his first term was some boss shat. That was one of the things he did in plain sight. Eric Holder was a… how do they say it in church? He was a deacon for justice!! Especially black justice, eliminating a lot of the racist practices at the DOJ and pursuing hundreds of cases against black civil right violations. They eventually forced him out, because he called America a bunch of cowards for not standing up to racism, but he had made his mark while he was there. Obama also sneakily reversed the Supreme Court ruling on the federal governments having states with historically racist voting policies having to report any changes to them of their voting policies to be approved. He did that in the small print of the Voting rights Act of 2013. There were a lot of small things he did that were out of sight that help the black community that didn’t get the attention it deserved. It was for a good reason though… if they knew about it, they would have fought it. If I had used the same scale I used for the other presidents, it would be no doubt that Obama would have been a 10 plus- “Hey man you want to be my partner!”
A Rack Of Bad Men
So that takes care of the good guys, it time to warm up the grill again as we cook the rest of them over an open flame like they do at Burger King. So, we are going to start with William H. Taft. Taft let them know right from the start in his inaugural speech, that if you want to hang a Nigra’s on that tree in front of the white house, it’s okay with me. He delivered one of the most bigoted speeches at an inaugural ceremony in American history. It’s no doubt he was playing to the audience of the next president and who was only one of three who got a “1” – “Faque Off!!” in this evaluation. The one who assumed the oval office next was none other than Woodrow “Let’s Go Back To Slavery Days” Wilson. Wilson presided over the Red Summer, when blacks and minorities were viciously attacked by racist all over the country, the gathering of over 25,000 Ku Klux Klan members who marched down Pennsylvania Ave in Washington DC and the playing of “Birth Of A Nation” in the front room of the White House… Okay I don’t know if it was in the White House front room, but he played it in there somewhere! Of course, Birth Of A Nation was one of the most racist movies ever produced in the United States. G.W Griffith left no racial stereotype unturned in the movie, including black men wanting white women and raping them if they resisted. Of course, no racist movie would be complete without the Klan coming to the rescue and Griffith made that the theme of his movie. The Klan coming to rescue the fair and beautiful white woman from the heathen Negros… it couldn’t get more disgusting. So that was the type of President Woodrow Wilson was. You know something, I think we are gonna change his score to zero, like somebody else’s. So, the bad guys had a “.95”.. now they got a “.9” Ain’t much, but it depends on whether you look at the glass as half empty or half full. Ima look at it as though its half full… half full of racist. Racist: Look Sam, there are about five more inches of rope there… pull em up higher!” Feel me? Herbert Hoover is next on our list of bad guys. Now Hoover is a bad guy simply because his number put him there. He scored a “5.” Everybody above a five is a good guy. Hoover simple didn’t do enough for civil rights. He didn’t fare worst because he appointed more blacks to government positions that the previous presidents, but he also remove them from the leadership positions in the Republican Party. Remember Lincoln was a Republican and so some leadership positions in the party were held by blacks. Anyway, he did that to garner support down South and it was a rat ass move and it lowered his score. That’s why he is a bad guy… Lyndon B. Johnson is an enigma. According to our criteria, the more you do for civil rights, the higher your score. This dude should be head of the Black Panther Party… however he is one our lowest scorers. That’s because Johnson was a stank human being. He cared as much about black folks as we care about a racist being caught in the darky section at night breaking into the preacher’s house. Johnson: “I’ll have them nigg@rs voting Democratic for the next two hundred years.” It was all about controlling our vote. The “ONLY” reason Johnson would cut the rope from the tree is because it was election day and that nigra needed to vote before the polls closed. He got a “2” – “We won’t pee on your statue during daylight hours,” in our poll and to be real, that’s mighty generous. The first historically recorded crook on our list is Richard M. Nixon. Nixon like Johnson was one bigoted (fill in the word.) He did absolutely no “THING” for civil rights while he was in office except talk about us like a dog. If you missed the article on him, click on the link, but make sure you wash your hands after reading it. So I said there were three number “1”s one our list. Ronald Reagan is the one of those people. It was Ronald Reagan who let the men in his administration introduce crack cocaine to the black inner cities of Los Angeles to help fund his war in Central America with devastating effects. He had us all fooled. In the beginning Reagan was a Democrat, then he switched over to Republican after he started making dough as an actor. Only the oxycodone epidemic has done more harm to our country than the crack epidemic. He did some other stank stuff while in office too, like going down to Philadelphia, Mississippi and giving a speech without mentioning the murders of Goodman Chaney and Schwartz, who were killed down the road not even five miles from where he was cheesing with the racist and hillbillies. He was a monster and it’s no secret at least to me why they bring up his name at Republican rallies, its code for look at what he done to the Nigras, that’s our blueprint. Now you might not think that the other person I have as number “1” deserves it, but he does. The last number “1” I have on the list in this time period is George H.W. Bush. This Bush voted against the 1964 Civil Right Bill because he said it only affected 14 % of the people and he was worried about the other 86%. That’s how you say I’m a racist without saying I’m a racist. He was also the one who nominated Clarence Thomas to the high court and put out the infamous Willie Horton adds. Now to be fair, Willie Horton was faqued up with his shat, but it is more to the story than that. Read the link if you haven’t and you will see this is a well deserved “1.” Our next president is the only “0” we have on the list, but it is not the only “ONLY” he has accomplished. He is the only president to be convicted of a sex crime. The only president who has been impeached twice, the only president who has been charged in a racketeering case, the only president who has been indicted in “four criminal investigations and the only president who has been charged with sedition against the United States. I’m talking about Donald Trump. He has done more harm to our democracy than any other president in history. Right now, he is running for the office again and if he wins, black folks will suffer as they have never suffered before in the last 400 years. Now, although many people don’t talk about it, it is no secret that all four prosecutors are black. The judge trying him for sedition is black and the sheriff who arrested him and took a mug shot of him is black. He has already said if he wins, there will be payback… and he means that shat! We will be living in a “make it happen” world for the foreseeable future if he takes the oath. He will not forget the black faces of his so called oppressors… and folks that is real talk. Finally, we have to talk about Joe Biden. I always knew Joe was one of them ever since I saw him chair the judiciary committee at the Thomas Clarence Supreme Court nomination. The way he let those Republicans treat Anita Hill was appalling. Add to that he was the author of the 1994 Crime Bill and it not hard to believe how Joe only got a “4.” The crime bill accelerated the era of mass incarceration and ruined the lives of millions of black families. Before he became Obama’s Vice president, Joe was a notorious bigot and I have outlined it in my article about him.
Do Tell…
So now let’s get down to the numbers…
President with the most enslaved people: George Washington. He had between 250 and 600 enslaved people.
Last President to own enslave people in the White House: Zachary Taylor
Number Of Presidents who enslaved people: 12 (Grant owned one slave but freed him in 1859. He was a gift from his father in-law. He is one of the 12.)
Number of Presidents who are descendants of slaveowners: 45 (The only president who is not a descendant of a slaveowner is … surprise! Donald Trump. His ancestors arrived after 1865 when slavery was illegal, or they would have purchased a whole rack of us…. bigly.)
Number of Presidents who had ties to the Ku Klux Klan: 0. However, Woodrow Wilson was an ardent supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. At least one supreme court justice was a former Klan member. In addition, at least 11 governors, 16 senators and as many as 75 congressmen have been reported as having ties to the organization.
President who received the highest black vote in a presidential election: Barack Obama with 82%. However, he has the highest percentage of black votes for someone who eventually became president. Al Gore received the highest vote count by black Americans in any race with 86% of the black vote in 2000.
Which President signed the most civil rights legislation into law: That would be Lyndon B. Johnson. He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1965 into law.
How many Presidents have been to Africa: There have been 8 presidents who have visited Africa. Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W Bush, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama.
Presidents who maintained a segregated office: Woodrow Wilson, Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and Benjamin Harris.
Presidents who had children by enslave people: (4) Yes, they only talk about Thomas Jefferson, but there was also James Madison and Coreen, John Tyler and Sally, and Andrew Jackson and Hannah.
Number of presidents against school busing: (3) So Brown v. Board of Education made segregated schools unconstitutional. They remained segregated however because most blacks and whites lived in separate communities. To desegregate the schools, the school system had to bus children in and out of communities to achieve diversity. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan opposed busing.
Number of presidents who visited Harlem. (3) Harlem has historically been a center for civil rights and African American culture. Although Harlem and the United Nations are located in Manhattan, only three presidents have ever been to Harlem, Franklin Roosevelt, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Bill Clinton established an office there after leaving the presidency but probably burned that shat to the ground after the blacks supported Obama instead of his wife in the 2007 primaries.
How many presidents have attended a black church: (4) They say Sunday morning is the most segregated time in the US, but only four US presidents have attended a black church… Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
How many Presidents have spoken at Howard University commencement. (5) Calvin Coolidge (1924), Herbert Hoover (1932), Harry Truman (1952), Lyndon Johnson (1965) and Barack Obama (2016). Barack Obama has been the only president to speak at Howard University in this millennium although Howard University, the first black college in the Nation’s Capitol founded in 1867 is only 2 miles away from the White House. 50 years separated the Johnson and Obama speeches.
How many presidents attended Martin Luther Kings funeral: (1) Lyndon Johnson. There were two other living presidents at the time, Harry Truman, and Dwight D Eisenhower.
Who were the three worst Presidents in terms of Civil Rights: Rutherford B. Hayes, responsible for the Great Betrayal, which removed the federal troops from the south after the Civil War. Woodrow Wilson, for putting the presidential stamp of approval on the Ku Klux Klan by allowing tens of thousands to march in Washington DC and the showing Birth of a Nation in the White House, which gave a visual platform to prejudice and hate nationwide, and Bill Clinton for signing the 1994 Crimes Bill which added 60% more people to the prison rolls, most being members of minorities.
Who were the three best presidents in terms of Civil Rights. I have to give to him ya’ll… Abraham Lincoln for freeing us. Dwight D. Eisenhower for the Warren Court and putting people on the bench so that Brown v Board of Education would be won. They overturned Plessy v Ferguson which mandated separate but equal and it led directly to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Finally, I have to say Andrew Johnson, who made sure Lincolns plans for Reconstruction stayed on course. During those 12 years of Reconstruction, we entered politics, established towns, built schools and colleges, bought land and opened businesses. It was the foundation that everything else has been built on. Now I know some of you wanted to see Obama on this list, but his accomplishments in Civil Rights paled to the ones I have so far discussed. Earlier I said he was one of the five best presidents in US history and that is right. As a matter of fact, after all is said and done, he probably comes in at number one as the best overall president in US history… but he wasn’t effective at Civil Rights legislation… because they wouldn’t let him be effective at that… and after all that’s what this series has been about… presidents and civil rights.
Another Beginning
So, this is the end. We finally finished “By The Numbers.” I hope you enjoyed these articles as much as I enjoyed writing them. There is one more thing we haven’t covered yet and that is what ever happened to Enslavia? Well, we will check in on her situation next week when we explore more black history in Hill1News.
Thanks for reading ©Hill1News.
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