What were the racial views of the US Presidents before JFK? I’d like the opinions of all of them.
Several were slave owners; here’s a list
Jackson is famous among other things for the Trail of Tears
In more recent times Truman was said to hold anti-Semitic views.
A huge proportion of presidents would hold views that we would view as racist or prejudiced today, just look at how long Jim Crow went on before federal invention. Had you any specific presidents or periods in mind?
Thank you and I was asking for all the Presidents.
All of the presidents? You could write a book on the subject. Here’s one.
Among some of the more notable examples; Andrew Johnson has been called a “fervent white supremacist” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101509.html) and attempted to blocked civil rights legislation during the reconstruction;
More info: Civil Rights Act of 1866 - Wikipedia
Wilson was certainly racist, a supporter of Jim Crow he is quoted as saying among other things; “If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it.”
Even FDR signed Executive Order 9066, for the creation of Japanese Internment Camps.
Then there’s Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves, but eventually freed most of them, and appears to have had an actual love affair (as opposed to a sex-slave relationship) with one of them.
Woodrow Wilson was pretty clearly a racist.
But with other presidents, their personal views weren’t necessarily reflected in their actions. As noted above, Truman may have not liked Jews, but he recognized the new state of israel immediately, helping it gain legitimacy on the international stage. Truman also desegregated the U.S. armed forces. Eisenhower wasn’t particularly progressive on matters of race, but he committed federal troops to enforce the court-ordered desegregation of the schools in Little Rock. Theodore Roosevelt’s brand of nationalism didn’t seem to include African-Americans or Asian-Americans, but it didn’t automatically exclude them, either. Warren Harding, who may have been the worst President ever, famously went to Birmingham, Alabama in 1921 to make a speech calling for full civil rights for black people – which was pretty damn gutsy. And Calvin Coolidge, whose writings seemed to oppose whites and non-whites mixing, also opposed the restrictions that blocked Japanese from immigrating to the U.S.
Theodore Roosevelt served with black regiments the “Buffalo Soldiers” in the Spanish American war and thought highly of them (see also; http://www.history.army.mil/documents/spanam/bssjh/shbrt-bssjh.htm]. He was also the first to invite an African-American (Booker T. Washington) to the White House, and the first to appoint a Jewish (Oscar S. Straus) cabinet member.
It can be argued that the overall public view prevented him from being any more progressive, as opposed to any prejudices on his part.
More info here: Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt - Wikipedia
Missed the edit window;
Hoover has also been praised for his (at the time) progressive views:
Like most historical figures when we subject him to standards of today he doesn’t come off all that favourably, though. More info here:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6389/is_3_88/ai_n28812368/
Wasn’t Warren Harding supposedly part black? Or was this a rumor, intended to be derogatory, which was circulated about him by his opponents?
A rumour, although of course there is no way to know for sure.
Lincoln’s personal views on race are difficult to assess. His political career was based on the opposition of slavery to the territories, but he famously campaigned on respecting the constitutional recognition for slavery in the slave states. He also took the position that freed slaves should be re-patriated to Africa, since whites and blacks could not live together. That view today would be seen as an extreme racist view. At the time, however, it was considered a moderate view within the Republican Party, and was likely in touch with moderate popular opinion in the North. And on the other hand, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and also signed the 13th Amendment when passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification - something no other President has done, since the President is not involved in the amending process.
Doris Kearns Goodwin addresses the issue of Lincoln’s views in her book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, at pp. 207-208:
He DIDN’T free most of them. Just a few of them, in fact.
George Washington freed all his slaves, but only posthumously.
He left some of them for Martha, stipulating that they be freed upon her death. Needless to say she freed them herself, so there wouldn’t be a strong motivation for her demise.
Lincoln preceded him by inviting Frederick Douglass to the White House in 1863.
I stand corrected, said the man in the orthopaedic shoes. Still, it was unusual enough to cause a hubbub.
Many, like Jefferson and Lincoln, had evolving (not necessarily evolved) views on race. Their opinion of blacks/Indians/others at age 30 wasn’t necessarily the view they had at 50 or at (in Jefferson’s case) 80.
Jackson certainly didn’t see Indians as fully human, but his greatest hatred was possibly for the English. He was the youngest of three sons of Ulster Scot emigrants, and the Scots Irish generally had little love for the English to begin with. During the Revolution one of his brothers (Hugh) was killed in battle, the other (Robert) died of disease contracted on a British prison ship; while nursing him and other prisoners their mother developed the disease and died also. Meanwhile a British officer occupying the Jackson house assaulted him with a sword (and by rumor sexually*) when he refused to polish the officer’s boots, leaving a permanent scar on Jackson’s face and ear. Thereafter he hated the English with a passion, once as a judge hanging two Englishmen for the crime of “trespassing” when they were the men who brought charges in his court.
So if English counts as a race (can’t think of why it would, but then it’s as much of a genetic difference as any other ‘race’), I think this bears mention.
Though he hated them in battle and vowed to kill them, he came to respect William Weatherford, the Creek chief, and some of the other chiefs after their conference and forcing their surrender. I’ve wondered if his repercussions may not have been even bloodier had most of the Creek chiefs not had as much Scottish blood as Creek. (If they’d been part Creek and part English- and there were some who were- he’d have problem kept fighting til every one of them were dead.)
[Only AJ knew for sure and even if true I doubt he’d have told it, but it was a rumor; there were some vicious rumors that make the Obama birth certificate/Bristol Palin rumors all pale by comparison about Jackson by his opponents and even more vicious ones by Jackson’s people about his opponents]
Gee, you’re not the least bit modest in your demands, are you?
IIRC, he freed all those which he owned at the time of his death. Martha owned slaves of her own, and it’s true that she freed them before she died.
Washington was the only slaveholding President to free his slaves. Here’s an article I wrote a few years ago about him; the portion beginning with the paragraph headed “One states’ rights issue in particular bothered Washington” discusses his evolving views on slavery: George Washington: Hero of the Confederacy
http://www.mountvernon.org/learn/meet_george/index.cfm/ss/101/
(bolding mine)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_13_95/ai_54724996/
He certainly had trepidations about slavery, but there were also practical legal considerations in not releasing all his slaves upon his death;
Jackson was a much mroe complicated character than most leftist or antiracist histories writen today admit. In fact, his hatred of Indians was founded largely on the fact that several major tribes were allies of the British or heavily influenced by them (to the detriment of the still-fledgling United States). His adoped son was AmerIndian, for example. He seemed to really hate some tribes (who were close to England’s heart) and not others, for another.