IOTL, Washington’s famous “Atlanta Compromise” Speech propelled him to victory in 1896 over the Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan (OOC: this is not necessarily the same as OTL’s Atlanta Compromise, feel free to imply what it’s about at your will). Your challenge is to prevent Washington’s presidency. Bonus points if you delay a black presidency for any significant length of time.
Truth is.....there's a rather good case to be made that it was almost miraculous for America to have a black President
at all that early on, as there was still a fairly widespread problem with racism back then(that, and the Democratic Party ticket splintered that year, with the "Redeemer" Democrats led by none other than S.C. firebrand Ben Tillman, not to mention the GOP ended up nominating a virtual nobody); yes, I know, it wasn't
always virulent, of course, but it was still fairly well present even up North and out West.....and when news of Washington's victory first came out, almost immediately(relatively speaking)
dozens of violent riots broke out in cities across the country(only a majority of the Western states failed to see any large scale violence, sadly), with thousands of deaths occurring, including several hundred lynchings, over the next 2 months.
And sadly, Washington's term essentially saw him largely, if not even completely in some cases-hamstrung on many issues, and what hadn't helped at all, was that the Progressive Party, which he'd joined only a few years earlier, had only recently risen to prominence and hadn't won many seats-or friends-in Congress. But he
did manage to secure some important reforms, including in favor of worker's rights, which earned him some respect-if grudgingly in some quarters-amongst a good section of the labor movement, and that has given him a rather positive reputation amongst modern historians.(Not to mention his placement of a certain pair of two liberal Justices on the Supreme Court ended up having some rather positive ramifications; perhaps were it not for them, Jim Crow might have taken until, say, the mid or late 1960s to end, instead of the early 1950s-just about a half decade after World War II ended, as in OTL, and it may have also been that things like anti-interracial marriage laws, etc. may have become more widespread, and carried more severe penalties as well.)
And regardless, though it would be 76 years before another African-American President was elected, President Washington is still considered to be a trailblazer in many respects, despite all the difficulty he faced.