First lady Melania Trump accepts flowers from Lillian Naa Adai Sai, 8, as she arrives at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, Ghana Tuesday. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)
First lady Melania Trump headed out on a four-country tour throughout Africa this week, continuing a solo-trip tradition started by Pat Nixon, who visited Liberia, Ghana and Ivory Coast in 1972.
Surprisingly, no president had left the United States while in office until 1906, when Theodore Roosevelt went to Panama to inspect the construction of the Panama Canal. He was also the first to go to Africa, though he did so post-presidency.
Here’s a photo tour of presidents and first ladies visiting the cradle of humankind.
Theodore Roosevelt
Weeks after leaving office in 1909, Theodore Roosevelt embarked on an expedition through what is now Kenya, Congo and South Sudan, hunting game for the Smithsonian Institution’s nascent natural history museum. In 13 months, he and his crew bagged more than 11,000 specimens.
[Trump says he doesn’t take vacations. They couldn’t top Teddy Roosevelt’s, anyway.]
A lion shot by Roosevelt was recently restored and put back on display in National Museum of Natural History.
Lover of big game hunts, Theodore Roosevelt is shown beside elephant he brought down in Africa in 1909. (AP)
The Library of Congress also has silent film from the expedition.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
The second Roosevelt was the first sitting president to visit the African continent while in office, but he did so in secret. His plane first touched down in what is now Gambia before meeting with Winston Churchill in Casablanca in what is now Morocco in 1943 to discuss war plans.
[Churchill’s powerful ‘fight on the beaches’ speech: The words few people actually heard]
He also swung through Liberia on his return. Only after he and Churchill were safely back in their respective countries did the press report on it. The National Archives has a detailed description of the remarkable trip here.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, accompanied by U.S. staff officers, rides past Old Glory as he inspects American troops in North Africa during his visit to Casablanca in 1943. (Pool/AP)
Dwight D. Eisenhower
President Dwight D. Eisenhower made a stopover in Tunisia in 1959, while on a cruise to a conference in France. He met with Tunisia’s president and returned to the sites of some of his World War II battles.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his host, Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, left, at Bourguiba’s Palace in Tunis in 1959. (AP)
The Nixons
In January 1972, Pat Nixon became the first first lady to go on a solo tour to Africa. She visited Ghana, Ivory Coast and Liberia.
In the GIF below, from footage at the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library, Pat Nixon is wrapped with a lappa skirt and headwear in Liberia.
She also joined her husband on a nine-country world tour in June 1974, including a stop in Egypt, less than two months before he resigned.
[Nixon was obsessed with leaks. It led to Watergate — and ruin.]
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and President Richard Nixon shake hands in 1974 in front of the pyramids at Giza, near Cairo. (Horst Faas/AP)
The Carters
Though he served only one term, Jimmy Carter is one of the most well-traveled presidents, and made the first official state visit by a president to sub-Saharan Africa in 1978. Here, after a church service in Lagos, Nigeria, Carter is joined by first lady Rosalynn Carter, far right, and Nigerian General Olusegun Obasanjo. At the time, Obasanjo was the head of state appointed by a military council. The next year, he transferred power to a democratically elected president.
President Jimmy Carter, left, watches Nigerian Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo adjust his clothing as they leave First Baptist Church in Lagos in 1978. First lady Rosalyn Carter, right, with Iyabo Obasanjo, the general’s daughter. (AP)
The Bushes, Part 1
In 1985, George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, visited a refugee camp in Sudan when he was vice president and she second lady. On the right, in the gray T-shirt, George W. Bush helps out.
Vice President George H.W. Bush tours a refugee camp in Western Sudan in 1985 with his son, George W., Bush. (Barry Thumma/AP)
And in 1993, as president, Bush visited an orphanage in Somalia, a few weeks before leaving office.
President George H.W. Bush greets Somali children applauding him during a visit to an orphanage in Baidoa in 1993. (Jerome Delay/AP)
The Clintons
As first lady, Hillary Clinton took daughter Chelsea on a two-week trip to Senegal, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda and Eritrea in 1997.
First lady Hillary Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, look at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe in 1997. (Win McNamee/Reuters)
South African president Nelson Mandela shows first lady Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea the cell in which he was imprisoned for 27 years. (Win McNamee/Reuters)
The first lady was reportedly so moved by Senegal’s Goree Island, the notorious port of departure for millions of Africans enslaved in the Americas, that she took her husband there a year later on another trip.
LEFT: First lady Hillary Clinton with her daughter in the “Door of No Return” at Senegal’s Goree Island in 1997. RIGHT: The first lady and President Bill Clinton at the same place a year later. (LEFT: Doug Mills/AP; RIGHT: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Hillary Clinton was one of the most well-traveled first ladies, visiting more than 80 countries during her husband’s two terms, according to PolitiFact. And yet she accelerated that pace as secretary of state under President Barack Obama, visiting 112 countries in four years.
The Bushes, Part 2
George W. Bush visited 11 African countries over his eight years in office, including a meeting with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the continent’s first democratically elected female head of state, in 2008.
Bush is also notable for starting the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which is credited with extending the lives of more than 14 million African people living with HIV/AIDS.
President George W. Bush stands with first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, left, in Monrovia in 2008. (Charles Dharapak/AP)
The Obamas
The first U.S. president of African descent had to delay a trip to his father’s homeland of Kenya for years into his presidency over concerns about the East African country’s political situation. Other than a few hours in Egypt, his first state visit to the continent was to Ghana 2009.
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama visit the La General Hospital in Accra, Ghana, in 2009. (Haraz N. Ghanbari/AP)
Former first lady Michelle Obama met with a retired Nelson Mandela on her first solo trip to Africa in 2011. She returned to South Africa with her husband on a state visit in the summer of 2013, and a few months later for Mandela’s funeral.
First lady Michelle Obama with Nelson Mandela at his home in Johannesburg on June 21, 2011. (Debbie Yazbek/Nelson Mandela Foundation/AP)
Obama finally made it to Kenya in 2015, and he made a joke about searching for his birth certificate.