This John Hanson was not the first Black President of the United States

There are many who claim that John Hanson was the first Black president of the United States, not Barack Obama.

This tale is continuously shared on social media. Because many people believe that everything posted on Facebook or Twitter is the truth, lies will spread like wildfire and before you know it, it has taken root and becomes hard to debunk, especially when people put these lies in books.

How anyone can look at the image of the supposed first black president, weigh it against the dates given, and believe it to be true is beyond me. Photography was invented in 1826, long after the United States was founded and after the first president, real or imagined, came into office.

The facts about this black John Hanson

John Hanson was a Liberian Senator from Grand Bassa County. He is clearly black, and from the picture, we can clearly see that he was born when cameras were invented and long after the first American president (real or imagined) was sworn in.

Hanson was born into slavery in Baltimore. When he was thirty-six years old, he purchased his freedom and moved to Liberia. He was a political activist and a supporter of the American Colonization Society (ACS). Established in 1816, the ACS was founded by a group comprising of philanthropists, clergies, abolitionists and slave owners with the primary purpose of freeing the slaves and literally kicking them out of the United States of America to some land purchased in Africa, known today as Liberia – the land of the free!

A Black photographer named Augustus Washington, who worked with the American Colonization Society in the late 1850s, captured portraits of Liberia’s emigrants, including this picture of Hanson.

The facts about white John Hanson

John Hanson, who people claim was the first president of the United States, was, in fact, white. According to History Myths, he was born in 1721 near Port Tobacco, Maryland. By the 1770s, Hanson had moved to Frederick, Maryland and was serving as the chief officer of the County’s Committee of Safety, a Revolutionary Era alternative to the British Colonial government of Frederick County.

Hanson was elected as one of Maryland’s delegates to the Continental Congress in 1779.  In late 1780, he was elected to preside over Congress under the ratified Articles of Confederation.

The Continental Congress existed first as a revolutionary body and then after the formal ratification of the Articles of Confederation on 1 March 1781 as the Congress of the Confederation Government. Most historians, however, refer to this body as the Continental Congress during the entire period of its existence from 1774 until 1788.

Hanson was not the first president of the Continental Congress, although he was one of several presidents, none of whom was “president” of the United States. Hanson has sometimes been called the first president of the nation. However, he was in no sense a true executive officer, as were the presidents elected under the Federal Constitution.

Need more?

If you’re still not convinced, remember this: America was knee-deep in slavery at that time. Do you really believe they would elect a Black man as president?  The next time someone claims that the first president of America was a black man, please gently correct them.

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