AMERICA AT 250 – A BLACK RETROSPECTIVE
1826 – 1875 Who Spoke for Us?
By NORRIS P. WEST
Barack Obama was the second Black president in North America.
The first was Vicente Guerrero, an Afro Latino hero of the Mexican War of Independence against Spain, who became that country’ s president in April 1829. Five months after taking office, Guerrero abolished slavery in Mexico, which at the time included territory that now forms Texas as well as California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and all or part of five other current U. S. states.
Guerrero’ s decree effectively outlawed slavery in Texas and, for a brief moment in history, it might have appeared that Black people would be forever free in what is now our nation’ s second largest state. But the moment would not last. Guerrero, later honored by having a state in Mexico named for him, was assassinated less than two years after the abolition. Texas legalized slavery once again when it became
Vicente Guerrero- Military officer and former President of Mexico
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