TRUE STORY: THE 2 JOHN HANSONS...For some years now, there has been a picture circulating on the Internet of a man of Moorish (black, African-American, etc.) descent who is being touted as the REAL 1st President of the United States and his name is John Hanson. In an effort to provide pride and inspiration to black people, we sometimes take some distorted folklore of history and latch our hopes onto them. But just as with George Washington chopping down cherry trees and Abraham Lincoln freeing the slaves, not everything that we learn in (or out of) history is true. There were TWO considerable men in history named John Hanson--one white, one black--, but neither of them were ever President. WHY THE WHITE JOHN HANSON WASNT PRESIDENT: John Hanson, born of Swedish descent in Charles County, Maryland, in 1715, was a merchant and a planter who owned a farm called Mulberry Grove. He served as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from 1757 to 1777. In 1780, before the colonies came together and decided to unite as one nation free from rule under Great Britain, they came together at the Continental Congress to show a united front against the dictatorship of their ruling country. The representatives from all of the colonies collectively elected John Hanson as their leader. So John Hanson could not have been the President, because the position was not yet applicable as their was no United States as a sovereign nation. Hanson did, however, serve as the 3rd president (stress the lowercase p) under the Articles of Confederation. The title of President (stress the capital P) did not apply until the Constitution was ratified and the United States was formed in 1788. John Hanson died in 1783. WHY THE BLACK JOHN HANSON WASNT PRESIDENT: In light of that information, that leaves the question Who was the black John Hanson? That John Hanson was also born in Maryland, but almost 80 yrs after the former one, in 1791. Hanson was born a slave, but by the age of 36, hed purchased his freedom and took part in the American Colonization Societys Back to Africa movement, which encouraged free blacks in the new nation of America to return to Africa and reclaim their lives there. Hanson arrived in Monrovia, Liberia (a country in West Africa that was colonized by the United States) on the Brig Doris ship in 1827. He became active in Liberian politics and was eventually elected as a Senator from the Grand Bassa county. He advocated the mass migration of freed blacks still living in the United States back to Liberia. If there were still any doubts as to the black John Hansons role of leadership in the United States, take this point into consideration: While a photograph of a black man who we know to be John Hanson does exist, photography wasnt invented until around 1822, long after the 1783 death of the white John Hanson and 23 years after that of George Washington.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 01:37:10 +0000
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