ABSTRACT
On January 20, 2009, a former Democratic United States senator from Illinois, African American Barack Obama, was sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States; he thus became the first black president of this nation. One hundred and forty-two years earlier, in 1856, an escaped slave from Maryland and then current race and abolitionist leader, Frederick Douglass, began the long African American road to the White House when he was nominated by the Political Abolition Party as its candidate for vice president of the United States. The nomination was short-lived. Likely Douglass refused the position; before adjourning, the PAP rescinded its nomination and instead gave the spot on the ticket to Samuel McFarland, a little-known white abolitionist from Pennsylvania. The path to the White House for blacks was not only lengthy; it proved to be filled with pot holes.
