Was Lincoln a Racist?, Obama's love of Lincoln

Original post on: Mon, 09 Feb 2009

AAPP says: Some time ago I wrote a post(s) regarding Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama. The post(s), Obama's love of Lincoln and Barack Obama Continues Myth of Abraham Lincoln, While Black Folks Lose Wealth. In both of those post I said, "as quiet as it may be kept, many African Americans are wondering whether Barack Obama is continuing American mythologyAbraham Lincoln was "the great emancipator." Well it looks like I'm not the only one interested in the mythology of Abraham Lincoln being the great Emancipator. Check out the article by Henry Louis Gates Jr; who writes, "The Great Emancipator was far more complicated than the mythical hero we have come to revere." I guess in some ways, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and I are thinking the same on this matter. I have not had the opportunity to meet Professor Gates but I would love too. As a American Civilization major I think this conversation would be an opportunity who's time has come. that

Check out Henry Louis Gates Jr's most recent work:

Was Lincoln a Racist?

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

I first encountered Abraham Lincoln in Piedmont, W.Va. When I was growing up, his picture was in nearly every black home I can recall, the only white man, other than Jesus himself, to grace black family walls. Lincoln was a hero to us.

One rainy Sunday afternoon in 1960, when I was 10 years old, I picked up a copy of our latest Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, and, thumbing through, stumbled upon Jim Bishop’s The Day Lincoln Was Shot, which had been published in 1955 and immediately became a runaway bestseller. It is an hour-by-hour chronicle of the last day of Lincoln’s life. I couldn’t help crying by the end. More on Was Lincoln a Racist?, Obama's love of Lincoln