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The Assassins: The First Black President and the Return of White Supremacy — Part 1
This is the third in a weekly series, detailing forty-five times that one or more persons attempted to assassinate a current or former American president. Our first Black president, Barack Obama, was targeted most frequently — a total of eight times. Three of these attempts were planned by avowed white supremacists, the purveyors of an irrational hatred that shows no signs of going away. This week, we will briefly discuss the history and psychology of white supremacy. Next week, we will detail the eight attempts to murder our only minority president.
On January 20, 2009, Barack Obama, a slender Black man who had represented Illinois — the ‘Land of Lincoln’ — in the United States Senate for the previous two years, raised his right hand and swore that he would “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” He grasped the hand extended by Chief Justice John Roberts, and then turned to gaze at the throng gathered on the National Mall — an estimated 1.8 million people, waiting to be addressed by the nation’s 44th president.
In the nearly 220 years that had passed since the inaugeration of George Washington, 43 other men had assumed our country’s highest office. Like Obama, 16 of them had previously served in the Senate. And also like Obama, 26 of his…
