The Invisibled by Jesse Holland

This is a compendium of our past assembled by people who led the country and whether they owned other people or not. There is a lot of good information in here about enslaved people who worked within the White House and those who were owned by previous Presidents of the United States--so a but of an eye opener in come cases and then things we know in other cases. The author has some firsts. He was the second African American to be editor of the daily campus newspaper, The Daily Mississippian, and he is the first ever African American to be a Supreme court correspondent for a major media organization. He has been a longtime reporter for the Associated Press, where he has covered the White House, as well as Congress, and so has a context within which to look at and present this information. There are some high points, like the Adams presidents never owned slaves, even though both of them certainly could of, and there were economic incentives to do so, but they believed it to be wrong. There are things we know, like the fact that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were all Virginians and not only owned slaves, but in some cases owned many. Washington and Madison freed the slaves closest to them upon their death, and Jefferson did not, not even those whom he had fathered. This paints Jackson a bit more favorably than I expected, but others, like Polk and Johnson, do not come off well. The history of slavery is touched upon, but the real focus is the presidents themselves, both while they were in the White House and when they were not. Definitely worth reading as a part of a US History education.