President’s Day: Keeping it Real

George Washington lied to his enslaved blacks to keep them from finding out they were free on their 181st day in the state of Pennsylvania.

Thomas Jefferson took Sally Hemings, an enslaved black woman, as his concubine, fathering several children by her while denying them all freedom.

Abraham Lincoln cared naught for enslaved blacks nor their rights; freeing them was in aid to winning the war. He represented slave owners as a lawyer and believed free blacks should go to Africa.

Franklin Roosevelt imprisoned tens-of-thousands of Americans of Japanese descent without cause or reason. He also perpetuated state sponsored black bondage in the South until the Japanese used his inaction as an effective propaganda tool during WWII.

Eisenhower failed the leadership test when, referring to school desegregation, he said of white parents “All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big black bucks.”

John Kennedy approved the Bay of Pigs invasion without study or close examination, the resulting fiasco directly led to the Cuban Missile Crisis when Khrushchev tagged Kennedy as weak and indecisive. Kennedy took credit for solving the missile crisis, a crisis he created.

Richard Nixon prolonged the Vietnam war by five years and killed at least 15,000 more American soldiers when he convinced South Vietnam’s President Thieu to walk away from peace negotiations as a way for Nixon to win in 1968.

The list could go on and on.