Where American Presidents Stood On Slavery, Race and Racism in America

About the Book

Our goal with this project was to inform the readers about the stances each American President had on race and how it affected their policy. We researched this topic to the best of our ability as many of these topics were not written about at length while others had extensive work already written. Ultimately each of these Presidents brought in their own racial biases and prejudices that impacted the lives of racial minorites throughout the nation. You will see that the nation was created by men who held deep prejudices against people of color and this permeated into their decisions as leaders. We see this pattern time and time again, of these men in positions of power carrying their prejudice into their politics. As time went on this bigotry became less overt, it changed from the question of slavery to civil rights to equal access to resources and opportunities. Conditions for minority groups have improved but not without the incessant activism work of many. The fight for a society where people are not judged based on the color of their skin or for their ethnic background continues today. We hope that this book will help you understand the legacy of racism from 1789 to 2021.

About the Author

Currently W. D. Palmer is the founder and director of the W. D. Palmer Foundation (est. 1955), a repository of information-gathering on racism in health, education, employment, housing, courts, prisons, higher education, military, government, politics, law, banking, insurance, etc. He is also the founder of the Black People’s University of Philadelphia (1955) Freedom School, which was the grassroots organizing and training center for grassroots community and political leadership in Philadelphia and nationally. These organizations were run as nonprofit unincorporated associations from 1955 until 1980, when the Palmer Foundation received its 501(c)(3) federal tax exemption status. W. D. Palmer has also been a professor, teaching American Racism at the University of Pennsylvania since the 1960’s and today he is a member of the Presidents Commission on 1619, the 400-year anniversary of African slavery in America. Professor Palmer has been a social activist leading the fight against racial injustice for over seventy years in Philadelphia and around the nation. In 2018, Philadelphia honored him for the organizing work he did to reform the Philadelphia school system in 1967.