“When we fail to discuss history, it seems to dissipate a bit.” “To feel motivated to make a change, you need to see yourself connected to the past,” Patricia says. 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. 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. And this energetic new mother is just beginning to realize the heft of the bully pulpit she inherited from her 350 lb. That makes her rare among an already elite group of presidential descendants, most of whom are white. As a biracial descendant of a president, Patricia Taft lives America’s original contradiction.Ī photograph of President William Howard Taft giving a speech in Massachusetts during 1912.
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. Who knows, one day she might even be laying the cornerstone of a new national monument.Īs a millennial, Patricia has lived Washington’s disconnect. 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. 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. 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.
president but I'm also a Black person, and the privilege of one does not negate the pain of the other,” Patricia says. And the architect by trade who lives a red-eye flight - and a few reality checks away - in California has designs on more.
She may not be an “influencer” (whatever that even means), but she’s quietly amassing influence here in the nation’s capital. “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. A post shared by Phoebe Robinson 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.
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