Recommended reading: "The Man" by Irving Wallace
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0051GZIQE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0051GZIQE&linkCode=as2&tag=thepabsungeni-20
I just re-read this the other day. Sadly, it's out of print except for Kindle and audiobook formats, but for those of you who can read such formats (or those who don't mind hunting down a used copy) it's worth the read.
Publisher's synopsis:
The time is 1964. The place is the Cabinet Room of the White House. An unexpected accident and the law of succession have just made Douglass Dilman the first black President of the United States.
This is the theme of what was surely one of the most provocative novels of the 1960s. It takes the reader into the storm center of the presidency, where Dilman, until now an almost unknown senator, must bear the weight of three burdens: his office, his race, and his private life.
From beginning to end, The Man is a novel of swift and tremendous drama, as President Dilman attempts to uphold his oath in the face of international crises, domestic dissension, violence, scandal, and ferocious hostility. Push comes to shove in a breathtaking climax, played out in the full glare of publicity, when the Senate of the United States meets for the first time in one hundred years to impeach the President.
The hatred and racism leveled against Dilman in this book is only shocking in how much more open it is than what we see thrown at President Obama today. In the intervening decades, the racists have learned how to mask their bigotry slightly better.
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