Fact check: Barack Obama, not John Hanson, was the first Black U.S. president

Brian Gordon, USA TODAY
Updated ·5 min read
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The claim: John Hanson was the first Black president of the United States

In the past few years, multiple social media posts have declared John Hanson, not Barack Obama, as the first Black president of the United States. The posts, which often feature a black-and-white photo of a man in glasses, also claim Hanson was the very first U.S. president, even before George Washington.

Historians like James Robinson, formerly of the Durkeeville Historical Society Museum, credited the late comedian Dick Gregory with popularizing the belief about John Hanson in the 1990s.

In May 2016, a Facebook post stated Hanson, misspelled Hansen, was the United States’ first Black president. "Barack Obama Was Never The First Black President. John Hansen Was The First Black President & He Also The First President Of The United States Even Before George Washington. We Never Hear About Him In Black History At All," the post, which is a photo of another post, claimed.

The post, which has been shared 13,000 times, was recently viral again. The poster did not respond to questions about the claim.

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The two John Hansons

The myth surrounding the first U.S. president confuses two historical figures named John Hanson, one Black and the other white.

The John Hanson who was Black was a former slave from Maryland who bought his freedom and moved to Liberia in 1827. Liberia, then a West African colony, had been founded by freed American slaves a few years earlier. Throughout the early and mid-1800s, organizations like the American Colonization Society encouraged formerly enslaved Americans to relocate there. Hanson went on to become a senator in Liberia.

Working with the America Colonization Society in the late 1850s, a Black photographer named Augustus Washington captured portraits of Liberia’s emigrants, including a daguerreotype of Hanson.

John Hanson, a Liberian senator around the late 1850s.
John Hanson, a Liberian senator around the late 1850s.

The white John Hanson served as a delegate in the Continental Congress in the early 1780s under the Articles of Confederation, America’s initial form of federal governance. After the Articles were ratified in 1781, the Continental Congress became known as the “Congress of the Confederation” or the “United States in Congress Assembled." Hanson was selected among the delegates to serve as the first president of this body.

The Founding Fathers intentionally constricted the authority of the federal government under the Articles of Confederation, said Peter Michael, author of “Remembering John Hanson: A Biography of the First President of the Original United States Government.”

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“It was weak by design,” Michael said. “No one was more acutely aware of this than the nine men who served as president of the first government.”

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Hanson held few of the executive powers later bestowed upon U.S. presidents from Washington on. He served his one-year term as president and died in 1783.

Realizing its federal government needed broader authority to levy taxes and regulate trade, the United States wrote a constitution in 1787, which created the structures of federal government we have today.

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Perhaps Washington wasn't first

Whether the white John Hanson should be considered the first president of the United States is open for debate, historians say.

“He was the first president of the United States, but it depends on how you define that,” said Mark Croatti, an adjunct professor of comparative politics and the American presidency at George Washington University. “There’s qualifiers involved.”

Croatti suggests a number of men could reasonably be called the first president before Washington was elected in 1789.

Michael, who is a descendent of the white John Hanson, noted that leaders in that era, including Washington himself, referred to Hanson as the first president. Yet neither Hanson nor any of the men who held the title of president before Washington were Black.

Americans of all races have embraced the John Hanson myth, Robinson of the Durkeeville Historical Society said, in part because American history narratives often overlooked the accomplishments of Black leaders.

"I believe the Black community has true heroes that have been woefully underreported," he said. "As a result, the community tends to latch onto heroes that sound right, even without historical basis."

Our ruling: False

The John Hanson who served as the first president of the Congress of the Confederation was white. The photograph purporting to be of the first Black president of the U.S. is actually of another John Hanson, who served as a Liberian senator in the mid-1800s. Daguerreotype photography wasn’t invented until the 1830s, making it impossible for a photograph of the first U.S. president to exist. In January 2009, Barack Obama became the first Black president of the United States. We rate this claim as FALSE, based on our research.

Our fact-check sources:

Brian Gordon is a statewide reporter with the USA Today Network in North Carolina. Reach him at bgordon@gannett.com or on Twitter @briansamuel92.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Barack Obama was first Black U.S. president