I can’t speak for other presidents, but James A. Garfield, elected in 1880, was certainly a “friend of the Black community”. Freed slaves strongly supported the Republican Party at large at the time, as it was the party of Lincoln, but they had a special adoration for Garfield. During Garfield’s presidential campaign, there was a political meeting for “colored citizens” at the Cooper institute of New York on October 25 1880. This meeting was completely racially integrated, just 15 years after the civil war. In fact, according to a newspaper report, “Black men and white were in almost equal proportion throughout the hall and on the platform”. The keynote speaker of this meeting, Frederick Douglass, said that “James A. Garfield must be our president.I know [Garfield], colored men; he is right on our questions, take my word for it. He is a typical American all over. He has shown us how man in the humblest circumstances can grapple with man, rise, and win. He has come from obscurity to fame, and we’ll make him more famous”.

Garfield also strongly believed in Freeman’s rights, as shown during his inaugural address, when he spoke about the legacy of slavery and the civil war. “The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787...It has freed us from the perpetual danger of war and dissolution. It has added immensely to the moral and industrial forces of our people. It has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both...They deserve the generous encouragement of all good men. So far as my authority can lawfully extend they shall enjoy the full and equal protection of the Constitution and the laws." The support that the Black community gave Garfield was reciprocated in his commitment to supporting their rights and elevating their status within American society.

Garfield’s friendship to the black community was demonstrated during one of his “front-porch talks” during the latter part of his campaign. Candidates in the 19th century typically did not go out campaigning, and rather waited for crowds to come to them to listen to them speak on the front porch of their home, leading to the name of “front-porch talks”. Members of an all-black university in Nashville, Tennessee came to Garfield’s farmhouse and sang for him. As Garfield’s private secretary later recalled, “Tears were trickling down the cheeks of many of the women, and one staid old gentleman blubbered audibly behind a door.” At the end of this performance, Garfield declared: “And I tell you now, in the closing days of this campaign, that I would rather be with you and defeated than against you and victorious.”

As to whether this friendship between Garfield and the Black community would have resulted in any improvements to the conditions of freed slaves, we will never know, as Garfield was unfortunately assassinated less than a year after his election. Nevertheless, the African-American community did have friends in the white house, at least for a short period of time.

Source:

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard