AHC: Earliest Black President

well if Jim Crow and such never happens, I'd say the 1880s or 1890s, the South is in the GOPs bag if the Blacks can vote and don't go north like in OTL, you got Mississippi, South Carolina and Louisiana are Black majority states, Alabama, Florida, and Georgia have 45% black population, so the deep south and New England and mid-west are all GOP strong holds, we're looking at the death of the Democratic party.
 
PoD no earlier than 1865; obviously a more successful Reconstruction -- no Black Codes in the 1880's, something like the Civil Rights Act of 1875 surviving the Supreme Court, etc -- is part of it, so what I'm most interested in is, given this, who the best candidate for first black President would then be.

(Also, JTBC, there's no constitutional problem with someone born a slave becoming President, at least TTL)
Actually, that would, IMO, require a constitutional amendment. The current phrase is 'natural born citizen', and slaves were not citizens.
 
It's possible in the Nineteenth Century if Reconstruction continues as planned, and the Democratic candidate is absolutely awful in the eyes of Northern whites. It's possible that you could see a split in the Republican Party though, if a black person is nominated for the presidency. The fact that slavery was abolished in the North, doesn't mean that Northerners would easily vote to elect a black president.

Actually, that would, IMO, require a constitutional amendment. The current phrase is 'natural born citizen', and slaves were not citizens.

You mean like the Fourteenth Amendment? :p
 
A while back I mentioned:

Well, it doesn't have to be within a generation or anything; as I think more on it, in a best plausible case scenario the country might be seriously ready for a black president 1920 or so, assuming there was a good candidate.

Possible candidate -- James W Johnson.

And JTRI -- this would be a TL with a much more successful Reconstruction, so he would probably have a somewhat different bio -- still, he definitely managed a lot OTL with all the challenges that came with it failure.
 
POD King survives Ray's bullet. I have heard that King was a Republican,this makes sense in that all the Jim Crow states were run by Democrats. If so then Nixon pulls a switch on his "Southern Strategy" in 72 picks King as his running mate and when he resigns over Watergate King becomes President.
King was a Republican as a young man in the 1950s, but switched over to the Democrats in the early 1960s. By the time of King's assassination in OTL, the switching over of segregationists from the Democrats to the Republicans was already well underway. I can't speak to 1960, but in 1968 and afterwards there's no way King would've supported Nixon, let alone run with him. (Not to mention that Nixon would have lost a shitload of support had he run with King. "Dick Nixon wants a Negro vice-president? Screw this, I'm voting for Wallace!")
 
I always thought that Zachary Taylor was black, until I discovered he wasn't! Then I learnt some US history and could see why he wouldn't be. His name just sounded black to me.

Who was that guy in the 1930s I used in my long long timeline?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
This thread prompts me to ask, "Earliest Black President?".

As far as I'm aware the current incumbent had a 'black' father and 'white' mother, so could equally (given sexual equality of course) be a 'black' or 'white' person or perhaps a 'black/white' person.

So the question is, when is the earliest time the US could have a (completely) 'Black' President?

[FWIW, as a 'half-American', frankly my dear I don't give a damn what colour, creed, race etc a President, or anyone else, may be]

Ugh, it's stupid to try and demand a sound logic to the concept of race since race is almost entirely a social phenomenon. Race is a fluid concept that is defined differently from one generation to the next and also from one society to the next.

Obama is black first and foremost because he defines himself as such, and in today's world that should be the end of the story, no questions asked. In addition, he does have Sub-Saharan African ancestry, and for the majority of US history people of mixed race origins such as Obama would have been defined as black whether they liked it or not under the one drop rule, which I imagine is the logic behind Obama's own self-identity.
 
Actually, that would, IMO, require a constitutional amendment. The current phrase is 'natural born citizen', and slaves were not citizens.

It's possible in the Nineteenth Century if Reconstruction continues as planned, and the Democratic candidate is absolutely awful in the eyes of Northern whites. It's possible that you could see a split in the Republican Party though, if a black person is nominated for the presidency. The fact that slavery was abolished in the North, doesn't mean that Northerners would easily vote to elect a black president.



You mean like the Fourteenth Amendment? :p
Yes. So, any black child born AFTER 9 July 1868 could be a president once he's old enough.

The 14th MADE citizens, so they weren't 'naturally born'.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
This thread prompts me to ask, "Earliest Black President?".

As far as I'm aware the current incumbent had a 'black' father and 'white' mother, so could equally (given sexual equality of course) be a 'black' or 'white' person or perhaps a 'black/white' person.

So the question is, when is the earliest time the US could have a (completely) 'Black' President?

[FWIW, as a 'half-American', frankly my dear I don't give a damn what colour, creed, race etc a President, or anyone else, may be]

The one drop rule applies to american racism: you're not allowed to rescind it when it displeases you that someone identifies by part of their origins.
 
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