Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents

by Margaret Kimberley

“This book is an effort to shed light on the truth. . . . To the extent that our leaders embody aspects of who we are as a people, studying how each president has participated in our nation’s complicated and often shameful treatment of Black people is as good a place as any to start.”  — Margaret Kimberley from the Preface

"Margaret Kimberley gives us an intellectual gem of prophetic fire about all the U.S. presidents and their deep roots in the vicious legacy of white supremacy and predatory capitalism. Such truths seem more than most Americans can bear, though we ignore her words at our own peril!" — Cornel West, author of Race Matters

PREJUDENTIAL is a concise, authoritative exploration of America’s relationship with race and Black Americans through the lens of the presidents who have been elected to represent all of its people. 
Throughout the history of the United States, numerous presidents have left their legacies as slaveholders, bigots, and inciters of racial violence, but were the ones generally regarded as more sympathetic to the plight and interests of Black Americans—such as Lincoln, FDR, and Clinton—really much better? And what of all the presidents whose relationship with Black America is not even considered in the pages of most history books? Over the course of 45 chapters—one for each president—Margaret Kimberley enlightens and informs readers about the attitudes and actions of the highest elected official in the country. By casting sunlight on an aspect of American history that is largely overlooked, Prejudential aims to increase awareness in a manner that will facilitate discussion and understanding.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Race, Politics, African American

208 pages, Paperback

Published February 4, 2020

About the author

Margaret Kimberley is a co-founder and Editor and Senior Columnist for Black Agenda Report. Her first book, “Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents” was published on February 4, 2020 by Steerforth Press. Dr. Cornel West said, “Margaret Kimberley gives us an intellectual gem or prophetic fire about all the U.S. presidents and their deep roots in the vicious legacy of white supremacy and predatory capitalism.” She is also a contributor to the anthologies “In Defense of Julian Assange,” and Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence. Her work has appeared in Counterpunch, Consortium News, Common Dreams and the Dallas Morning News. Ms. Kimberley is an Administrative Committee member of the United National Antiwar Coalition and the Coordinating Committee of Black Alliance for Peace. She is a graduate of Williams College and lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Avid · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be a book that answered the question: “given what we know about each president, which ones were in fact racists?” Instead, it pursued this assignment: “find at least one instance of racism in every president or his administration, and use it to support a claim that he was (or is) a racist.” As far as i know, nothing presented here was wrong, and it certainly illuminates the historical prevalence and persistence of racial inequality and injustice in this country. But to paint every individual who has ever held the office of president as a racist is a stretch. Such a conclusion undermines the theory that it’s meant to support. I mean, if everyone’s a racist, then no one’s a racist. The definition of racist collapses if there’s no such thing as a non-racist.

The writing was plain and straightforward. The research, though very limited and laser-focused, was original. The book was readable, and provocative. I didn’t dislike it, but i’m not sure i can really recommend it. I don’t think it does a good job of advancing the discussion.

[Deja Roden · Rating 1 out of 5]

From the beginning to end, Kimberly decided that I as a brown woman in America should hate my country and that it was useless for me to have served in the Navy. It baffles me that Americans can simultaneously hate their country but yet prosper in it? Kimberley lives in one of the most expensive zip codes in America, she is a graduate of Williams College and has been an editor and a senior columnist. You don't get to hate a country that you have been so successful in. I am tired of us as black and brown people playing a victim card. Everyday that I wake up, I get to have the same opportunity as any White, Asian, Hispanic and Native American, or any other ethnicity person. There are no doors shut to me by virtue of being brown. I REFUSE to believe this narrative that I need to be treated like I am a victim. I am grateful for the freedom and democracy that each and every president has continued on, and I can disagree/dislike each presidents beliefs and shortcomings. No man or woman is without fault. Every individual has contributed negatively and positively to our society. We all need to get off our high horses and focus on real issues.

[Melanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is definitely a different take on the US presidents. Author catalogues each of the 45 presidents (including Grover Cleveland twice!) and highlights their racist actions and associations, both documented and alleged, though a very 21st-century lens.

Spoiler alert: They're all too racist for this author. Every last one.

Again and again, she complains about each president's failure to abolish slavery, until we reach Lincoln, who abolished slavery, but she complains that he did it for politically expedient reasons. Perhaps the author does not realize that *all* politicians are self-dealing, or quickly become that way upon reaching elected office. This isn't new, and is probably as old as democracy itself. However, I have to ask sincerely: what would the likelihood have been of an abolitionist presidential candidate being voted in by a white male electorate? More recent presidents have used the black electorate as pawns, or in the case of Democrats, as guaranteed voters whose grievances or problems have been an afterthought.

Author is absolutely not interested in racial equality. Any doubt about that is removed in the last two paragraphs of the FDR chapter. She supports black advancement, and not advancement to parity. Just so we're clear. Warren Harding made a comment quoted at length in this book: "The Negroes are very hard to please. If they could have half of the Cabinet, seventy-five percent of the Bureau Chiefs, two-thirds of the Diplomatic appointments and all of the Officers to enforce prohibition perhaps there would be a measure of contentment temporarily, but I do not think it would long abide." That quote stuck with me in that it seems to sum up the author's position fairly well.

The discussion of other discrimination and relocation, particularly of indigenous peoples, was limited and uneven. She mentions the Trail of Tears and the Mexican American War, but absolutely nothing about the other atrocities that occurred in the aftermath of the Civil War, and then nothing else until her mention of drone assassinations during the Obama administration and travel bans during the early Trump administration. I felt like these issues should either have been better fleshed out or excised entirely from the text.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are we really an exceptional people with noble ideals? Invaders replaced the North American inhabitants and brought in a slave work force, “The political and economic system of this land was built on these crimes”. The chapter on Washington houses a revelation I’ve seen nowhere else, Washington “paid 122 shillings for nine teeth – less than a third the going rate at the time” for teeth taken from his own slaves. The new point for me was not that he paid his slaves for their teeth, but that he as a rich person intentionally under paid them for the permanent loss of a tooth and its discomfort. Washington wrote his secretary that he wished to “deceive” the public about his intentionally breaking slavery law. John Adams took England’s side in blaming black man Crispus Attucks for causing people to die at the beginning of the American Revolution. Adams said with a straight face that whites were treated worse than negroes. Black freedom scared him more than black slavery. He said, “The present slaveholders cannot be justly reproached.” Jefferson’s wealth depended on slavery. France loses Haitian slavery and sells Mississippi Purchase to raise funds to the US which opens the floodgates to far more slavery. Few can understand why Washington DC was built in a swamp until one reads that its location “gave slavery legal and physical protection”. Liberia’s capital Monrovia is named after James Monroe, who “kept blacks enslaved and wanted others to be shipped off so they wouldn’t interfere with the justifications for human ownership”. William Henry Harrison was always a slaveholder and fathered six children with an enslaved woman. How Presidential - Jefferson made me do it! The term “old” Virginia family is code for “slaveholding” Virginia family. Funny how this “sweet land of liberty” has had 12 slaveholding Presidents. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo made Mexico lose 55% of its land. Zachary Taylor was called heroic for stealing half of Mexico, so it is not surprising that modern presidents on both sides of the aisle can commit international war crimes with impunity to media silence.

“Lincoln told black people to their faces that they should leave the country and blamed them and their presence for the Civil War.” In 1862, he met with his cabinet and told them he was determined to send black people out of the country. Days before his assassination, Lincoln asked Benjamin Butler to develop another colonization plan after having discussed “compensation to the slaveholders’. Not exactly the Lincoln, taught to us in schools. Imagine being taught in school that the man who stopped President McKinley from getting shot a third time was black. James Benjamin Parker was erased from all US history classes even though one of the Secret Service agents admitted, “that colored man was quicker than we.” The same agent later denied “that colored man’s” existence – another role model erased. On hearing that racist president Teddy Roosevelt had dinner with Booker T. Washington, a South Carolina senator remarked in genuine Southern genteel fashion, “Entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.” Booker T. Washington once said, “The agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly.” Woodrow Wilson made sure the blacks could not attend Princeton when he was its President. Did you know that Princeton didn’t have a black graduate until 1946? Wilson segregates the federal workforce with sheets hung in the center of offices to separate whites from blacks, and some of Wilson’s cabinet members were instrumental in crafting Jim Crow. Harding saw blacks as a political nuisance – hard to silence and he felt they weren’t entitled to what they wanted. Coolidge supported removing black delegates from the 1924 Convention. Herbert Hoover wrote that “one white man equals from two to three of the colored races”. Did you know Truman went on a self-described “nigger chase” in 1914, was a KKK member in 1920 and that he used the word “nigger” his whole life? What a charmer. To win the 1948 election Truman to his credit courted the black vote (but to his discredit created the insane Cold War out of thin air to win the same election, according the Clark Clifford in an interview later). Eisenhower personally opposed the Brown v. Board of Education ruling and even opposed desegregation of the military but was forced to do it. JFK tried to stop the March on Washington and referred to Bayard Rustin as “that old black fairy.” Of MLK, JFK said, He’s not a serious person.” LBJ wrote a permission slip for his chauffeur that said, “This nigger drives for me.” Don’t credit LBJ with the Voting Rights Act, credit Fannie Lou Hamer. Republican strategist Lee Atwater said, “By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’ …so you say things like forced busing and state’s rights.” Margaret credits Nixon as the first President to reverse the political polarity of the two parties – the Republicans finally became the white party. Carter was a neoliberal who said, “I see nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained.” Reagan saw the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act as “humiliating to the South.” – Isn’t such white empathy touching? Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice “prepared Black America to expect black people in high places to act as their white counterparts did.” Obama obeyed to rules for running for President – Don’t make rich people angry. Don’t make white people angry. And “don’t appear to be helping black people in any way”. And so, Obama prattled on about absent black fathers and the “transformative” quality of Reagan while bailing out Wall Street - not Main Street. Liberals today mostly fear that Trump’s open racism and sexism tarnishes the Presidential brand, but any one reading this book would say Trump is not so strange when comparing him to all our former racist Presidents. As Margaret brilliantly ends her book, she remarks that our famous Indian fighters were just murderers with a good public relations team. All US history buffs should read this book – it’s a great retake on an old usually glorified subject. Liberals around me on Facebook adore Obama and somehow believe because he was a black President, and acted “classy”, he is more their professed hero than MLK, Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Fred Hampton or Ella Baker ever could be.

Years back, I read this cool article by Margaret on BAR about why should she care about Teddy Roosevelt and I was transfixed. I asked if she wanted a book grant on why should any black person really knowing their US history, care about the Presidency. Margaret accepted and the game was on. I love her sassiness and calling like it is approach to writing and this book is really great. It’s not a long book and is perfect for students. If it were longer, I would have loved to see more footnotes: for example, I wanted to know exactly where it said that GW paid one-third the going rate to pull teeth from his own slaves, but this book didn’t say. I’ve read ten other books critical of GW and not one mentioned the comparative cost of that teeth pull.

A longer book could have given the reader some way to compare Presidents to each other, in regards to addressing racism. For example, reading history it’s obvious Jefferson was much more racist than GW, but this book through its brevity does not have time to distinguish the shades of grey between Presidents. Which presidents went the farthest out of their way to strengthen slavery or disempower blacks? I would have also given the reader more history of how the two political parties swapped roles (Lincoln was Republican, not a Democrat). When FDR was President, he knew well he had to still appease the racist Southern Segregationist vote (as part of the New Deal Coalition) in his party of Lincoln. FDR’s thing was binding odd bedfellows together and walking tightropes successfully (Churchill vs. Stalin, etc.). Truman’s “Politics of 1948” Memorandum which Margaret mentions in this book, states “the democratic party is an unhappy alliance of Southern Conservatives, western progressives and Big–City labor”. As long as racist votes still had to be courted by Democrats (instead of by Republicans) up until Nixon, all Democratic Presidents had their hands somewhat tied. If longer, the book could have then briefly mentioned the important racial role of the Republican’s “Southern Strategy” from 1964 on.

This book does a really wonderful service of identifying what each US President did against the cause of racial justice without any arm twisting. Kudos to Ms. Kimberley.

[George1st · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although not American I have read a number of books recently on African American history covering such subjects as the Civil Rights movement, FDR's Black Cabinet and the 1898 white supremacist insurrection at Wilmington. One common theme is the hostility or at best indifference displayed by the federal government and the supine and spineless actions of the sitting presidents, always fearful of the electoral consequences of upsetting the racist south. Therefore Margaret Kimberley's concise, impassioned but also shamefully accurate account of the legacy of the 45 presidents to race equality and social justice did not particularly come as much of a surprise. Although for others, educated and influenced by historians and the media who have actively created and progressed what is essentially a false narrative, this book may be quite a shock.

It wasn't the chapters on the numerous slave owning or segregationist supporting presidents that I found most interesting but those that look at separating myth from reality on presidents like Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, Clinton and even Obama who have received almost reverential status among large sections of the black community. Also although not covered to the same degree the book also looks at the genocidal actions directed towards the Indigenous peoples. The conclusion is that far from being an aberration, Trump, although in a more transparent form, is a continuation of a theme that has existed since the creation of the country. Certain to spark discussion and debate, this is a book that is recommended for those who take a more sceptical look at often accepted truths.

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh Gosh, who would guess that a country with so many slaveholder presidents would have racism permeating it for centuries? Ten of the first twelve American presidents were slaveholders (the Adamses were the exception) and there would be more to come.

Margaret Kimberley has narrowed her focus in this book to just one question: how did each American president serve or fail to serve the interests of Black America? You probably already know how dismal the answer is for virtually every American president. But you might get a few surprises. We all hear about George Washington's "wooden dentures," but were you aware he had teeth forcibly taken from young slaves transplanted into his mouth? (This practice enjoyed a dental vogue in that period.) He nominally "paid" these slaves, but it wasn't like they had a choice in the matter. Were you aware Truman was a former Klansman? Were you aware that even "saintly" Lincoln just wished black people would go away somewhere, relocate to another country? Of course, you know about Liberia, but there were many other forced relocations of black Americans, some even in this hemisphere. They were cruel, disastrous, murderous. It's appropriate that the current political resurgence has linked arms with native rights, since the oppressions paralleled each other. Kimberley does give some background on native apartheid and genocide in this volume as well.

This is a slender volume with most entries on individual presidents running somewhere between two to five pages. So it's a quick read for those who like their history in manageable bites. But Kimberley is all about the succinct truth and does a great job of drawing your attention to areas for further reading. So I think this book is a useful find for readers and perhaps educators brave enough to employ it in their syllabi.

This book would pair well with Ava Duvernay's recent documentary 13th. Because DuVernay does such a great job of fleshing out how so many presidents in the Jim Crow era right up to today used dog whistle racism to win the South in presidential elections. DuVernay's documentary shows how segregationist tactics shifted to tactics of wide scale imprisonment of minorities. If you have any doubts about that statement, please check in with the "Lee Atwater moment" in that documentary. It says everything about our recent history. That continues to this day, of course. The documentary does a great job of showing how much damage presidents like Clinton did with his "reform policies." Remember when Toni Morrison called Clinton "our first black president?" (To be fair, that was before he sold his soul in the name of political "compromise.") DuVernay's documentary really makes you realize America has paralleled South Africa in its policies as it pretended to be innocent and the leading light for freedom in the world. What they did brashly there, we did not-so-subtly here. Kimberley's book savages the Clinton myths. And Reagan gets his comeuppance in this book. It's a travesty that Reagan is idolized since he trashed the lives of every underserved part of the American populace and even put a target on people with disabilities. Reagan let AIDS ravage the country in the same way that Trump has done with Covid-19. It's disgusting that a major airport hub bears his name simply because he pandered to the rich and the plutocrats.

What's the lesson to this book? Don't have heroes? Maybe? Or maybe it's better to look for heroes in out of the way places where power is not such a temptation that it warps people's souls and even their vision. Make America great again? No. Make America look again. Make America confess. Admit we are a people still on the way to understanding how to quell the worst parts of our nature, still driven by notions of superiority, not given to sharing or seeking equality, and often seeking to succeed at the expense of others. Figure out how we can change that part of our animal nature. But I asperse animals to use that word. What animal is so greedy as we are? I honestly don't know what word to place there. Is "evil" too anachronistic?

[Arielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a lot of issues with this book. I liked that the book was a brief overview of each President, but some basics were missing. The political party affiliation was missing from some of the presidents. Context is another big one. The author condemns many actions and dismissed the option of an action being “a product of the time,” but context in time matters. And she was inconsistent. She talked about FDR and a comment he made as being “appropriate for the time.” She missed a lot of opportunities to give more context. It was a whole lot of opinion with list ticks of facts.

It wasn’t until I got to Obama that u realized she took a lot of these presidential actions out of context. She quoted Obama as calling his pastor’s comments “divisive,” but she didn’t mention the part where in the same comment, Obama refused to condemn this pastor. It made me wonder what else had been taken out of context.

She left no context for actions taken. Sure, these presidents did these things, but why? We’re they genuinely racist? Did they want to do more, but couldn’t get the support from congress? Tell me more—without the author’s conjecture.

There are interesting nuggets of facts in here, but all the little opinions and lack of context make it not worth it to read.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

***I was granted an ARC of this via Netgalley from the publisher.***

The black community in the United States has had a complicated relationships with the office of the President of the United States. In the book, Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents, Margaret Kimberly examines the relationship and the attitudes both private and public and their actions or inaction of each presidents of the US towards the black community. Kimberly forces the readers to recognize the reluctance of US presidents to recognize the humanity of blacks in America, if they did at all, in exchange for political security in office. Those who did take steps did so when they had no other choice to capture the black vote. No bars are held back from any president. There are a few things I feel are overstated and I would liked to see an even deeper analysis of each president but I feel like this was a good introduction to the presidents and their complex interactions with the black community.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars. Would highly recommend to a friend.

[Henry Hakamaki · Rating 5 out of 5]

See the interview I did with Margaret on Prejudential here: https://youtu.be/Wb5K5OebcNA?t=9079

You can also watch another interview I did, cohosted by my Guerrilla History colleague Prof Adnan Husain, with Margaret here: https://youtu.be/ToRnQ-GKZAM?t=12870

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't ask for a better history of the US Presidents. History in general could benefit from writing like this. Concise and crystal clear - there is no mincing words, no trying to do right by those who are heralded. Kimberley is successful in detailing each presidents' racist actions and how the lack of education on these topics limits our ability to accurately assess and understand the country we live in. Could be read as a great reference book, compiled with fantastic sources, but I ran through this in just a few sittings.

What I found most remarkable was the brevity of US history. Of course, the years are plain to see. But, to read so many woefully detrimental actions (or lack thereof) tied so tightly together, time starts to blur. In that blur the broader patterns became easy to see. Black people in the USA have been generalized as a voter block and taken advantage of as a constituency. The two party system forces them to go against their louder rival, giving their votes to leaders who don't see much need to earn those votes going forward because the alternative is so impossible. The brevity also shocked me, seeing the clear impacts of slavery, voting rights, civil rights dragging on far beyond when those "issues" were "resolved".

Next I adored Kimberley's evisceration of the "Man of his Time" moniker. Highlighting how, regardless of what was legal at the time, the owning of human beings was never and could never be morally acceptable. To say any president was a "MOHT" is to take the easy way out and neglect to mention any wrongdoing or inability to change that time for the better.

So many powerful ideas and themes to pull, but most relevant as Black Lives Matter continues to revolutionize the future of this country:

1. From the Zachary Taylor chapter - "If the institution of slavery and its aftermath aren't examined, then objective truths like the inordinate number of blacks being killed by police won't be questioned, either"
2. Massive changes that altered the course of this country for the better never came from voting, they came from massive and radical pressure on elected officials. A Philip Randolph challenged the FDR and Truman administrations and didn't back down and forced them into meaningful change.
3. It's hard not to see a clear line from the moderate stance on slavery - to limit its expansion, or refusing to see a world without it - echoed in the words of moderate democrats today in 2020, aiming to reform rather than abolish the police. Both are ways for white leaders to maintain power in a country and in a system that has grown from and supported white supremacy. A failure to push for abolishment is an endorsement of that system.

Just so much to glean from this one. I devoured it and could run it back again immediately. It brings up so many huge questions - why do we idolize presidents, what parts of history have we forgotten, what patterns and systems and we refused to acknowledge and destroy. A beautifully researched and meaningful perspective of some people who with their power have squandered their opportunity to create a more just society.

[Tina Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Job of Uncovering the Ugly Truths!

Great book which provided a summary of how most US Presidents throughout history actively or indirectly participated in oppressing Black and Native American populations. There were facts in the book I did not know or they were never revealed to me in school but this book did just that (uncovered the ugly truths about the US Presidents throughout history)! I have a much better and clearer understanding of the history and origin of racist and discriminatory policies and programs that were implemented under certain Presidents. It all makes sense now after reading this book (Jim Crow laws, segregation, mass incarceration, destruction of many Native American populations, etc). The hypocrisy of so many US Presidents as it pertained to slavery and later Civil Rights and the lengths many of them would go to garner the Black vote then turn their backs on Black America once elected. I highly recommend this book as an educational tool to uncover the ugly truths and white supremacist views of most US Presidents throughout history. You will not learn this information in most US colleges and schools because so many Presidents are exalted and highly regarded. Growing up, Presidents Kennedy and Clinton were lauded as Presidents who helped Black America, but this book reveals a different truth.

[JRT · Rating 4 out of 5]

One cannot read this book and not come away with the basic conclusion that the Office of the Presidency of the United States is inherently racist, notwithstanding who occupies it. Every single President this country has ever had has either (a) openly and brazenly pursued anti-Black (and other racist) policy, (b) betrayed and ignored Black / anti-racist interests due to political calculus, or (c) a combination of both. Even the Presidents who served incredibly short terms due to deaths while in office had long histories of anti-Black and racist policy pursuits prior to their ascendance. Thus, anti-Black racism should be seen as a function and a feature of the Presidency. To varying degrees, anti-Black racism exists in every single President as a necessary condition for occupying the office. I would have liked to see the author spend a little more time on a few of the Presidents' racist policies, but other than that, this book really drives home the above-referenced points. This is a great read for election season, especially for Black voters, who are left in a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance brought on by having to constantly choose between racist candidates. Great read!

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

The content of Margaret Kimberley's book is exclusively oriented toward the actions of each president with respect to race relations between Euro-Americans (my term, not hers) and African-Americans, regardless of what else these presidents did or didn't achieve.

As a lifelong student of politics, it surprises me not at all that the author sees none of the presidents as realistically having had bragging rights about their initiatives (ie there were none) in abolishing slavery, repealing the Jim Crow laws, or alleviating the mass of systemic discriminatory stresses experienced by African Americans.

I would have liked some more detail with many of these entries: I get the impression that this was a fairly hurried work, but as far as I'm concerned there is enough material here to solidly underscore the author's points.

[Devin Boehmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty disheartening to read and made me feel pretty hopeless after finishing. I loved that it was short and to the point but the concise format didn’t work for me for retaining information. Reflecting back, I can really only remember a handful of her key points mostly about the more well-known presidents. I guess I wish there was more historical context for each administration and slightly longer chapters. Definitely a me problem and not the fault of the author. Still think it was very educational, made me think and a book that would be easy to reread in the future.

One of the biggest surprises was how many presidents were KKK-affiliated in some way or another.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative and cuts straight to the point. This book basically lays out everything you didn’t learn in your history classes. For those that are upset that this book just puts down all past Presidents let me point this out: The author wrote this book about Black America and the Presidents. Racism runs so deep in America, it’d be foolish to think that the presidency would be any different. This book is a hard pill to swallow but a necessary one. Educating ourselves about the past is the only way to move forward

[Lillian Darlene Common · Rating 5 out of 5]

The American Democracy Truth and Myth From the top

No American should vote in another election without reading this book. We must e!bark on a truth in history campaign to expose the false narrative of the American hypocrisy. This book is an excellent beginning of we are to move towards a more perfect union and the healing and reparations owed to the American Descendents of slavery that built the wealth of this nation.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise chapters on each U.S. president from George Washington to DJT; summarizing their actions and inactions regarding race relations. The research notes at the end of the book provides strong support for the author's conclusions. I highly recommend this book as a stepping stone to learning more on the topic.

[Peggy Ostrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great resource if you are looking for a starting point to teach yourself about systemic racism. This book tracks presidents 1-45 and where they stood when it came to racist policies. While some have a better track record at attempting to include blacks in the political process, most fail miserable at eliminating the systems that keep people of color from full participation.

[Tarun · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read into the relationship between black people and US presidents, from Washington to Trump. Each chapter profile clearly shows the author's extensive research into the hypocrisy that these figures did anything willingly positive to promote or advance civil rights, freedoms or desegregation of non-white people. Probably should be required reading in American classrooms.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting account of each president from Washington on down to the present time. What they have done for the blacks and what they promised and never did. Also includes some of the story of the movement of the Indians as well.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad commentary. Important information. Concisely told. Researched but just wish our country’s past was less overtly racist.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short synapsis: every single president did things to oppress Indigenous and Black people. The end.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing read! I learned a TON and it made me real pissed off. Which is a good sign, I think? lol Highly recommend!

[Leni Konstas · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are not into history like me, this is a great introduction into a lot of bigger narratives around our presidential history.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but not a great work of history. More like reading an encyclopedia. Which is nice sometimes.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read. Some interesting info but there were times it felt the author was reaching to make a point. Still interesting.

[Brumaire Bodbyl-Mast · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent look into each of the president’s relations to black America- which demonstrates the inherit racism of the American project