The (Not So) Secret Racist Moments of American Presidents

Today is President's Day, and while you're reading all of the articles in praise of the men who have taken their turn in the Oval Office, let's talk about the stories that didn't get a lot of attention in your high school text books: some of the racist moments of our nation's leaders.

They're moments that sometimes came through in their policies, in the things they said (and the way they said it), or in private moments that later became public. A lot of them did some great things for the entire country, but failed when it came to racial equality because they didn't want to oppose the popular views of their time (and political party). Of course, time and context matter. Some of them tried to shed the racist or prejudice views they were brought up to believe later on during their presidencies. Some didn't.

Here are some of the worst racist moments of American presidents.

Number: 7th president

Term: March 4, 1829 – March 4, 1837

The man whose face is on every $20 probably shouldn't be on the bill at all.

Jackson occasionally worked as a slave trader and owned hundreds of slaves on the Hermitage plantation. He was also instrumental in the signing of the Indian Removal Act that led to the removal of 46,000 Native Americans from their homeland. The act was initially supposed to lead to the voluntary relocation of tribes located on the east of the Mississippi to the west, but when some of the tribes resisted, they were forced.

"It will separate the Indians from immediate contact with settlements of whites; free them from the power of the States; enable them to pursue happiness in their own way and under their own rude institutions; will retard the progress of decay, which is lessening their numbers, and perhaps cause them gradually, under the protection of the Government and through the influence of good counsels, tocast off their savage habits and become an interesting, civilized, and Christian community," he said in a speech regarding the act. This led to the "death march" that was the Trail of Tears two years after Jackson left office.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote of Jackson's policies, "[They're] a crime that really deprives us as well as the Cherokees of a country, for how could we call the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our government, or the land that was cursed by their parting and dying imprecations our country any more?"

Number: 26th president

Term: Sept. 14, 1901 – March 4, 1909

Teddy believed that whites were the "forward race." He was influenced by eugenics, a belief that advocated for the breeding of people with "good traits" and not those of the poor, which was a popular view of the time. He thought that the "backward" races would gradually take on the characteristics of the white race, and wanted to reach racial equality, slowly, during a time when whites were largely considered the natural dominant race. It was the whites' social responsibility to teach the “backward races" morals and how to function when it came to politics and industry. As the blacks rose, whites would rise even higher, he believed.

In his book, African Game Trails, he referred to the "dark-skinned races" that he observed in Africa as "ape-like naked savages, who dwell in the woods and prey on creature not much wilder or lower than themselves."

Native Americans also weren't very high up on his list. "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians," he said in an 1886 speech, "but I believe nine out of every 10 are, andI shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the 10th."

But Teddy did invite Booker T. Washington to the White House to have dinner, which caused an uproar with racists, and before that, ended school segregation as governor of New York.

Number: 28th president

Term: March 4, 1913 – March 4, 1921

Woodrow Wilson's racists views aren't debated by anyone—this dude was cut from the finest racist fabric. He passed legislation to make interracial marriage a felony in Washington D.C., and, as president of Princeton University, he discouraged blacks from applying. “The whole temper andtradition of the place are such that no Negro has ever applied for admission," he said of the university, "and it seems unlikely that the question will ever assume practical form."

Under his administration, Wilson appointed Southerners who pressed for segregation in the military and made those who applied to federal jobs submit photographs of themselves to keep blacks out of the positions. He said that his actions were to reduce the "friction" between white and black workers and defended his policies by saying they were far "from being a movement against the Negroes... I sincerely believe it tobe in their interest."

Number: 32nd president

Term: March 4, 1933 – April 12, 1945

Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 sent 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps (including thousands of Germans and Italians). The act itself affected many families strictly due to their ancestry, even if they were American citizens. Roosevelt also didn't invite 1936 Olympic hero Jesse Owens, an African American, to the White House after he returned from Germany. Owens famously said, “Hitler didn’t snub me—it was our president who snubbed me. He didn't even send me a telegram." FDR also didn't support anti-lynching laws until after WWII.

Number: 33rd president

Term: April 12, 1945 – Jan. 20, 1953

Truman once called Adam Clayton Powell that "damned n****r preacher," and wrote in a private letter that, “I think one man is just as good as another so long as he’s not a n****r or a Chinaman.” But he would go on to do a lot for African Americans during his presidency—like defending civil rights after African American soldiers were being assaulted after returning from WWII—and break away from the biases he was raised on while growing up in the South for the good of the nation.

Number: 37th president

Term: Jan. 20, 1969 – Aug. 9, 1974

"We're going to [place] more ofthese little Negro bastards on the welfare rolls at $2,400 a family," Nixon once said of blacks. "Let people like Pat Moynihan and Leonard Garment and others believe in all that crap. But I don't believe in it. Work, work—throw 'em off the rolls. That's the key." His campaign even pandered to whites. In an an attempt to secure the electoral votes of the former Confederate states when he ran for president in '68, Nixon appealed to the racist views of the whites in what's now known as the "Southern Strategy" of campaigning for the Southern white vote.

What he said of Mexicans wasn't much better. "I have the greatest affection for them [Negroes] but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years," he said. "They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like."

Or of Jewish people: "The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality."

And race affected his views on abortion: "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white... Or a rape."

Number: 36th president

Term: Nov. 22, 1963 – Jan. 20, 1969

Lyndon B. Johnson is considered a champion of civil rights because he passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and focused on taking down the KKK. But the man didn't have a way with words, and constantly chose to use the word "n****r" like it was his own name. He even called the Civil Rights Act the "n****r bill."

In Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960, by Robert Dallek, Johnson reportedly defended appointing Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court to a staff member by saying, "Son, when I appoint a n****r to the court, I want everyone to know he's a n****r."

George Washington

Thomas Jefferson

James Madison

James Monroe

Andrew Jackson

Martin Van Buren

William Harrison

John Tyler

James Polk

Zachary Taylor

Andrew Johnson

Ulysses S. Grant