Patricia Taft is the Black great-granddaughter of a U.S. president — and she's taking on Washington

WASHINGTON — A few weeks ago, with cherry blossoms popping across the nation’s capital, Vice President Kamala Harris teamed up with Glamour magazine to co-host a TikTok-worthy Women’s History Month brunch.

Among the attendees: Megan Thee Stallion, actors Simone Ashley and Nicole Ari Parker and creatives, such as Marley Dias. They were joined by female icons from business, politics, sports, writing, and fashion.

Patricia Taft, the 38-year-old great-granddaughter of President William Howard Taft and first lady Helen Herron Taft, learned about the event while scrolling through social media.

“I wasn't invited,” Patricia laughs over chai lattes at a cafe just a block from the White House, mere days after the big names – non-presidentially speaking, at least – departed. “I'm not an influencer!”

She may not be an “influencer” (whatever that even means), but she’s quietly amassing influence here in the nation’s capital. And the architect by trade who lives a red-eye flight — and a few reality checks away — in California has designs on more.

“I am the descendant of a U.S. president but I'm also a Black person, and the privilege of one does not negate the pain of the other,” Patricia says.

Last year, for example, Patricia was part of a coalition which helped enshrine National First Ladies Day in America’s National Calendar, now celebrated annually on the last Saturday of April — this year, on April 29. For now, she’s using her family name to get into some of the most elite Washington circles – you can’t buy your way into The Society of Presidential Descendants — where she’s become an outspoken evangelist for bringing to life the legacies of American first ladies and suffragettes. Besides pushing Congress to make National First Ladies Day a federal holiday, she has other ideas on how to enliven the sometimes predictable national conversation about history, women and race. Who knows, one day she might even be laying the cornerstone of a new national monument.

As a millennial, Patricia has lived Washington’s disconnect. As a woman, she feels largely left out of American history despite her lineage — at least the varnished version engraved in the National Mall and enshrined in public school textbooks. As a biracial descendant of a president, Patricia Taft lives America’s original contradiction.

A photograph of President William Howard Taft giving a speech in Massachusetts during 1912. Library of Congress

That makes her rare among an already elite group of presidential descendants, most of whom are white. And this energetic new mother is just beginning to realize the heft of the bully pulpit she inherited from her 350 lb. great-grandfather — the 27th president who also served as Supreme Court chief justice — and her ceiling-shattering great-grandmother, the first first lady in many respects. Patricia Taft has been slowly studying Washington’s wacky ways, but her daughter makes her more inspired than ever to breathe life into long forgotten — or purposefully glossed over — events that helped shape our nation as constituted in 2023.

“To feel motivated to make a change, you need to see yourself connected to the past,” Patricia says. “When we fail to discuss history, it seems to dissipate a bit.”

She’s not in the dissipation game.

'Badasses'

Part of Patricia’s role — one she’s admittedly making up as she goes — is to serve as a bridge, connecting the Americans of now to a richer, fuller understanding of our living roots.

That’s why she’s not upset for being accidentally dissed by the nation’s first female, first Black and first biracial vice president in Kamala Harris. Patricia just wishes the White House and Smithsonian shared more history with invited influencers than the gowns of first ladies.

“Not jealous. Just found it really interesting, because they’re all like, ‘These dresses are so pretty.’ I’m not just thinking me, but anyone who could add a historical perspective to this that could actually make it a greater thing than just a few dresses would be amazing,” Patricia explains on a rainy spring day in D.C. “But I get it because you want people there that are going to garner press, right? It’s strategic, but there’s a void.”

While in town, Patricia’s feet can’t help but trod on soil her great-grandparent’s boots pounded first, because they left their marks all over this town. She was with her 20-month-old daughter, Herron — named after her great-great-grandma — as she visited the White House, to which her great-grandpa added a signature Oval Office in 1909. After meeting with the White House Historical Society, she made her way to the Women's Suffragist Monument Foundation, for a meeting with its executive director.

“You just need to draw people back in. Take first ladies from further back and put them into a context and a framework that applies today,” Patricia says.

“Women's History Month presents opportunities to present [history] on steroids,” Patricia says. “It’s spring. There are so many missed opportunities that could have really been built upon this.”

‘I've avoided politics my entire life’

While she hopes to upend Washington, don’t expect to see Patricia Taft asking for your vote anytime soon.

“I've avoided politics my entire life. I'm really traumatized because I grew up in a political family. Like, my cousin was governor when I was in high school,” she remembers, eyes almost rolling, of former Gov. Robert Alphonso Taft III (R-OH). “I was terrified of ever getting in any trouble, that it was going to be everywhere, which is so funny because the media then is not what the media is today.”

Per Taft family tradition, Patricia was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where her name didn’t get her free drinks — we asked — but was nevertheless everywhere. (Another relative, Robert A. Taft Sr., was a U.S. senator, while several other Taft relatives have served in government as U.S. attorney general, ambassador to Ireland, acting secretary of defense and mayor of Cincinnati.)

“Everything’s, like, 'Taft Road'. There’s a Taft Museum. A Taft Theatre,” the Southern California transplant says.

Patricia’s still not political — at least not in the warped ways of Washington. That’s partly why she was just in town. The cum laude Vanderbilt graduate was given an honorary lifetime membership to the University Club of Washington, D.C., as she puts it, “as an ode to my great grandfather, William Howard Taft.” He was, turns out, the club’s first president (though she forgets to mention he also laid the cornerstone on its 1912 headquarters — while president of the United States of America).

While her great-grandpa gets most of the historical attention, Patricia’s found herself transformed into an evangelist, of sorts, for Helen Taft, her great-grandmother. A first lady who went by “Nellie,” especially when she was throwing booze-soaked White House concerts, eviscerating Jim Crow-norms, or transforming Washington’s Tidal Basin from a speedway — to the chagrin of sexist male reporters – into the glorious spring garden it is today.

“She’s just a baller,” Patricia gushes.

First lady Helen Herron Taft in 1909. Library of Congress

Part of what draws Patricia Taft to her great-grandmother is how she secured women’s and minority rights by being herself. Before Helen Taft, first ladies didn’t attend presidential inaugurations (“That's crazy,” Patricia says), send bills to Congress, write memoirs, or lead development projects in the nation’s capital.

As she blazed all these trails in the early 1900s, critics abounded, but Helen Taft refused to bend. That’s why hundreds of thousands of people are able to enjoy Washington’s roughly 3,800 cherry trees today.

“All these men ignored her. They were like, ‘That's not what you do. Like, you don't plant cherry blossom trees in a park,’” Patricia recalls.

Until Helen Taft, first ladies also didn’t hold press conferences, publicly declare themselves a “qualified” suffragist or dare to be seen publicly advising their husbands on politics. (Her free spirit had a limit: Helen Taft didn't advertising her smoking habit and love of poker.)

“She was the first first lady to be very public about the fact that she was an advisor to her husband, and she drove it. She's why he was president, and she counseled him,” Patricia proudly recounts.

She also publicly advocated for worker’s rights, even over the protests of her husband’s political advisors.

“She did it anyway, and she was embraced because of it,” Patricia says. “That's a story that could apply to today. It reminds people — and I know we’re all jaded and cynical — that there’s a little hope and hopefully inspire people that way.”

It was the same thing for Black rights, at a time when there were no such thing, especially in the segregated south.

'Someone had to be the first'

While President William Howard Taft was no civil rights leader, the Republican Party, under his leadership, did adopt an anti-lynching plank in its official party platform. Because of first lady Helen Taft, Black Americans were allowed to work in the White House for the first time as ushers. That meant anyone visiting — heads of states, ambassadors, governors, members of Congress — were met with a Black greeter.

Small, yet seismic.

“I know someone would have eventually opened it up, but she did. Someone had to be the first,” Patricia recalls.

Three years ago, during the George Floyd protests, she was aghast watching as then-President Donald Trump sent the National Guard and Park Police – along with riot gear, rubber bullets, and helicopters — to break up protests in front of the White House. To her it was sad seeing the cries of Black Americans like her misrepresented, even as she could see where the two sides spoke past each other.

“I just have a way of communicating things in a way that makes them more open to understanding the perspective of the Black Lives Matter,” she explains. “I have a way of phrasing things in a manner that could help them see and understand that the black lives matter.”

To her, the personal stories behind America’s racist past and present cut through much of the political noise surrounding the topic. And her family’s story combined with her own lived struggle as a Black woman, make her a natural embodiment of the tension intertwined in America’s still unwritten story.

“You have to show people the connection,” Patricia says. “I think it's more just showing people like different lenses.”

Naturally, Patricia sees things others miss. As a Black female presidential descendant, February (Black History Month) and March (Women’s History Month) are some of the busiest months, and then attention recedes.

“Why does Women’s History Month and Black History Month have to be back-to-back? Let them breathe and have their moment. I feel like I’m shoving things down people’s throats,” Patricia bemoans, even as she’s shameless about blasting all her contacts when she’s passionate.

There’s a contradiction built into the federal calendar that remains lost on many who make up today’s predominately white political class. As an unofficial spokeswoman for her ancestors, Patricia’s inundated with speaking requests around President’s Day, which is peculiar to her because only one of the nation’s 44 presidents is Black.

“Why is it the same month as President’s Day? The press like to have me on to talk about President’s Day on these panels, but I don’t want people just to sit there and focus on white people: It’s Black History Month!” Patricia points out. “I’m not gonna go mess with the national calendar. I’m just saying, like maybe Women’s History Month could be in April? I don’t know.”

She’s being modest — she already helped upend the National Calendar. Last year was the first time in history National First Ladies Day was celebrated on the last Saturday in April. It’s now an annual celebration, brought to us by The National First Ladies Day Commission, whose board Patricia serves on.

History: a bridge to the future

Cherry blossoms faded. Women’s History Month is over, and so is Black History Month. In a Southern state, another book is banned.

But Patricia Taft isn’t going anywhere. She brings the voice of an outsider to the bully pulpit she inherited from her great grandparents.

“I think just having a daughter … for her it's going to be such a different experience. Growing up she’s going to learn so much more about these women who made these huge accomplishments,” Patricia says. “I’m just trying to get the story out. That’s what I’m doing.”

Like her great grandmother, she pushes envelopes while adapting. And she’s not going to let her great grandma’s sacrifices be forgotten in this supposed #MeToo-era.

Patricia Taft and her daughter, Herron, in Washington, D.C.

“Sadly, many first ladies are figments of the past and often forgotten,” Patricia tells Raw Story. “I am passionate about National First Ladies Day because conversation and representation matter.”

Could a memorial or monument to first lady Helen Taft be in the future?

“Maybe she could get, like, something,” Patricia says.

And who knows, next year, she may be livestreaming her family’s story — including the chapters she’s adding to it — from the vice president’s mansion.

“With streaming, it’s like a vacuum, even within political D.C. right now, and what gets people’s attention is, like, hot names,” Patricia notes. “I guess you have to tell the story before people know the story, right? It's like so many other things. I should start a TikTok just to get the story out.”