When First Lady Jackie Kennedy visited England in 1961, society photographer Cecil Beaton met her at a dinner party. In his journal he commented she had a ‘Negroid’ appearance.
The first black First Lady? Jacqueline Kennedy. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.
Beaton detected what some claim is Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’s African heritage. That would make her the first black First Lady — at least under the “one-drop rule” — well before Michelle Obama moved into the White House.
Jackie was related to the van Salee family, according to the New York Genealogical and Historical Society. Anthony and Abraham van Salee were among the first settlers of New Amsterdam, renamed New York in 1664. Their father was Jan Janszoon, a Dutch pirate who converted to Islam and went native in North Africa. Historians believe he fathered Anthony and Abraham with a mistress of mixed race.
Anthony van Salee came to New Amsterdam at 22 – perhaps the first Muslim in the New World. He then found success as a prominent landholder and merchant.
Anthony consequently defended minorities. Contemporaries described him as ‘tawny,’ ‘half-Moroccan,’ ‘a former black slave’ and ‘mulatto.’
One of the van Salee descendants, John Van Salee De Grasse, received a formal education as a doctor. He then joined the Medical Society of Massachusetts and served as surgeon for the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War.
How, exactly, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was related to Anthony or Abraham van Salee is unclear, at least to the New England Historical Society. (Perhaps a genealogist can help us out.)
Under the ‘one drop’ racial code, all she needed was one distant ancestor from sub-Saharan Africa to be considered black. The code, first enacted as law in Tennessee in 1910, decreed that a person with one drop of black blood was to be considered black.
Jackie’s father, John Vernou Bouvier, had such a swarthy complexion that people called him ‘Black Jack.’ Jackie’s classmates at Miss Porter’s School asked her if he was really white.
1st Black First Lady?
Jackie Kennedy took on the First Lady role when African-Americans agitated for equality under the law.
President Kennedy supported (though somewhat tepidly) anti-discrimination laws. And so the New York Genealogical and Historical Society approached Jackie Kennedy hoping to discuss her African ancestry. Perhaps, they thought, it could help get a Civil Rights bill passed.
But Jackie Kennedy described her van Salee ancestors as ‘Jewish.’
She wouldn’t be the first person with African blood to inhabit the White House. The van Salee descendants also included President Warren G. Harding, as well as the Vanderbilts, the Whitneys and Humphrey Bogart.
President Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, a mixed-race woman who he enslaved.
And since nearly 4 percent of European-Americans have African ancestors, the United States probably had more than one black First Lady.
Beaton, by the way, did not limit his catty remarks to Jackie Kennedy. He described Audrey Hepburn as looking ‘Mongolian’ with a huge mouth.
Here’s his complete description of the first black First Lady Jackie Kennedy.
Huge, baseball-player’s shoulders and haunches, big boyish hands and feet; very dark, beautiful receptive eyes looking roguish or sad — sometimes they pop too much — mouth very large and generous, with a smile turning down at the corners in an inverted laugh; a somewhat negroid appearance; the suspicion of a moustache, and very black hair.
Click on the image to buy the ebook from Amazon. Paperback version now available.
Find out what happened when Jackie did the Twist at the White House — and get her daiquiri recipe too — in Eat Like a President.
You might also enjoy this story about Jack and Jackie Kennedy’s wedding here. This story about the first black first lady was updated in 2023.
24 comments
So, you are use the disreputable “one drop” rule to suggest someone is from a particular background, and you don’t actually know if Jackie Kennedy was related to this person who MAY have had black ancestry. Or may have had Arabic ancestry.
In other words, this is completely unsubstantiated speculation.
And Cecil Beaton was well known to be a bit of a gossipy b**ch, so the fact that he made a comment about someone’s appearance means little.
I call click bait!
Today that doesn’t even matter. The “one drop” doesn’t exist,every child born in the US has American on their birth cert. WE found that out when my granddaughter was born. Who father was African American/native Indian
The article references the “‘one drop’ racial code”, but seems at pains to adhere to it. Jackie Kennedy may well have had at least one “black” ancestor. Many of us do. But to call her–repeatedly in the article–a black woman is to submit to a standard that was always a racially-motivated tactic to suppress black people throughout the post-Civil War south. The article needs a thorough rewrite.
“‘one drop’ racial code”: JEWISH & NAZI TACTICS
I so completely agree with your evaluation of the tone of this article. Americans, as it is, more and more appear absolutely provincial in their preoccupation with race, now a term considered to have very little meaning in view of modern genetics.
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There’ are so many whites out their passing………also among them…J Edgar Hiover….Loni Anderson,Jayne Mansfield…clear gable…..Joseph Cotten….the lkst goes on and on……oh and President Lincoln
Carol Channing
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JACKIE MORE IRISH THAN JFK
Jackie Kennedy was more Irish than her husband according to a genealogist who claims she tried to hide it because of her humble roots.
Jim O’Callaghan has spent over a year studying the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis family tree.
He’s told the Irish edition of the Sunday Times that the first lady was half Irish despite her links with France.
The report says she spoke fluent French, attended the Sorbonne and wore Chanel but Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whose maiden name was Bouvier, was more Irish than French.
The paper claims the former first lady’s Irish roots were even deeper than those of her husband.
Jackie reportedly grew up believing she was descended from French royalty, was actually half-Irish says the report.
It also claims that JFK’s wife is ‘believed to have been embarrassed by the humble origins of her Irish forebears, and glossed over them in favour of her French roots’.
Jackie’s father’s family came from the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France.
But her mother’s family came from Clare according to O’Callaghan.
He told the Sunday Times that Kennedy was one-eighth French and half-Irish, with most of her ancestors coming from Shandrum, near Mullagh, in Co Clare.
O’Callaghan discovered that on her maternal line, all eight great-great grandparents and two of her four great-grandparents were born in Ireland, making her more Mullagh than Montpellier.
The genealogist travelled to New York and Boston to research Jackie O’s family and was surprised by the results.
He said: “The surnames of the four families involved on her mother’s side are Lee, Norton, Merritt and Curry. You would imagine that she might have been happy to accentuate her Irish ancestry when she met the Kennedys, but it appears not.”
O’Callaghan told the paper that the Irish connection may have been fudged, as both her mother Janet Lee and her father Jack Bouvier ‘enhanced’ their family trees in an effort to climb the social ladder.
He added: “The Irish who emigrated to America struggled to be accepted in polite society, so it’s not surprising her family downplayed it.”
O’Callaghan says Lee even invented a link to Robert E Lee, the famous American general. In the family’s listing in the National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, there is no mention of Irish heritage.
The Merritts and Currys originated in Clare, with the Lees and Nortons thought to be from Cork according to O’Callaghan.
He said: “But conclusive proof of this is difficult, as they emigrated to America a generation earlier, and Irish records are scant for that period.”
The family gravestone in New York’s Calvary cemetery states that Jackie’s great-grandparents Thomas Merritt and Maria Curry were born in Co Clare and records show her great-great-grandfather Thomas Lee was born in the early 1800s in Cork.
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Jackie O was beautiful you black is beautiful. We know was was mixed but why people hide heritage ? Look at John jr how gorgeous he was people can not help what made them i am a JEW i come from Ethiopia my day irish my eyes black as coal my. 2sister eyes hazel. 2with gray eyes. 2with violet eyes. my eyes turn turn 4 different colors with the seasons
That’s not it, she probably didn’t know, and that would really be stretching it to say that she’s is black. However, I also understand how cool it is to understand your full background.
Apparently people don’t realize that in 2016 Caroline did a DNA test and was shown to be 4% black which she never denied and freely admitted it when asked by a journalist. Knowing the Kennedy’s I am sure it would be a badge of honor making her more down with the people or something? Anyway as my father use to say who really knows what they’re and you’re what you look like makes sense to me!! We always consider ourselves to be all Irish turns out we are 6% Jewish and 18% Siberian what ever the hell that means!?
And I am happy to report that, much to my surprise, I am nearly 3% Neanderthal.
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The Bouviers came from France & settled in Phila, PA. If through them it had to be very far in their past (ie Jack’s GGGF or GGGM).
Moreover additional people will also use hats to
hide the truth that they could be sweating.
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ALL…ALL pink ‘people’ descend from Africans..and Neanderthals. Oh and Africans DON’T have the Neanderthal DNA! Let’s get THAT one straight!
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