A new twist to an intriguing family history (Obama Maternal Family had Slaves)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/politics/bal-obama0301,0,789030.story?coll=bal-home-headlines

Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.

But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now: it appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and Census records.

The records -- which had never been addressed publicly by the Illinois senator or his relatives -- were first noted in an ancestry report compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner, who works at the Library of Congress and practices genealogy in his spare time. The report, on Reitwiesner's Web site, carries a disclaimer that it is a "first draft" -- one likely to be examined more closely if Obama is nominated.

According to the research, one of Obama's great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 Census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show that one of Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.

The Sun retraced much of Reitwiesner's work, using Census information available on the Web site ancestry.com and documents retrieved by the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, among other sources. The records show that Overall, then 30, owned a 15-year-old black female and a 25-year-old black male, while Mary Duvall, his mother-in-law, owned a 60-year-old black man and a 58-year-old black woman. (Slaves are listed in the 1850 Census by owner, age, "sex," and "colour," not by name.)

[XemaSab]

1. This shouldn't be a shocker to anyone

:shrug:

[Kutjara]

2. So the MSM is having to dig back past 1865...

...to find skeletons in Obama's closet? Talk about desperation.

[caledesi]

38. Agree. They are so desperate, they must go back generations. nt

[crikkett]

48. ROFL

~too sweet~
:rofl:

[deadparrot]

3. Like I said about Romney,

people can't be held responsible for the actions of their ancestors.

If they're going to attack Obama, attack him on the issues, not on biological chance.

[Kutjara]

4. Well said. I hear Dubyah has an ancestor...

...that crawled out of a cave, hit people with spiked clubs, dragged women around by the hair and killed rivals indiscriminately. Oh wait...that IS Dubyah. Never mind.

[Thor_MN]

37. Dumbass had a ancestor that was in business the the Nazis

[RamboLiberal]

5. McCain and Edwards families also owned slaves

From OP article.

Reitwiesner's research identifies two other presidential candidates, Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, as descendants of slave owners. Three of McCain's great-great-grandfathers in Mississippi owned slaves, including one who owned 52 in 1860. Two ancestors of Edwards owned one slave each in Georgia in 1860.

[ChenZhen]

7. Isn't disappointing/disgusting to anyone...

...that the majority of presidential candidates today come from families "privileged" enough to own slaves 4 or 5 generations ago?

Seriously, thats pretty messed up to think about to me. Although my main family wasn't here that long ago, 3 generations back they were dying of black lung in Penn. mines (which took my Great grandfathers life and left my Grandpa without parents). That normally what I think the "average" person ancestors were doing (or something similar). And yet its not to surprise us when a candidate's (or most candidates') ancestors use to own slaves?

This says NOTHING about the candidate of course...but speaks volumnes about this country on so many levels. Yes, Im sickend about slavery, and yes, Im sickened about classism, the elite, etc, but this type of information sadly brings it all back around on a whole new level suggesting just how deep rooted this mess is.


Fake democracy, fake politicians and fake American Dream.

[liberalpragmatist]

10. You shouldn't be surprised if you had slave-owning ancestors, too

Four or five generations back would mean you had an awful lot of ancestors. And especially if your family were Southern, chances are at least one branch would have owned slaves, even your immediate family history was more modest and even though only a minority of Southern whites owned slaves.

[kdmorris]

15. It wasn't privilege, necessarily

It's a terrible fact when you find out, but, on my father's side, back in Louisiana and Texas, they owned slaves. I hated that fact when I found out. That was my fathers paternal line. My father's maternal line came from Michigan and fought hard against the south. On THAT side, we had an ancestor who spend 10 months in Andersonville.

My father's family ended up in West Texas during the Depression and finally made their way to California with all their possessions to become migrant farm workers... you know, similar to Tom Joad. They eventually moved out of the fields of California and became the janitors and handymen of Madera, California.

They are by no means privileged. And NO ONE should be criticized for the actions of their forefathers from hundreds of years ago. I had to come to terms with this awful past long ago, but at first, it made me feel like shit.

[rebel with a cause]

18. Oh please.

You did not have to be "privileged" (meaning rich) to buy a few slaves back in the day. You had to be wrong but not rich. I recently found out, much to my horror, that I had ancestors who bought slaves in the 1800 and they lived in Illinois. (There were some of the northern states that had laws against buying and selling slaves but exemptions to allow owing them.) They went south, made their purchases and returned to the north. One ancestor had a small farm and brought back one slave. The other ancestor owed an inn and had two slaves. Whether these people remained slaves, I don't know but the census definitely showed they were at one time considered slaves. None of my ancestors were rich, per se. They were just wrong to think that anyone should be able to purchase another human being.

As far as other ancestors, I had a grandfather that went to work in the coal mines at nine, a great grandfather that died on a wagon train while traveling to Missouri to visit relatives. My first European ancestors arrived a short time after the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock and helped build the settlement of Fort Christina. My Native American ancestors were already here. I have ancestors/family that fought in the Revolutionary War and all those that followed including WWII. Some of my ancestors in the Kentucky fought for the North in the Civil War and were given land grants in Illinois from President Lincoln, and that is how they came here.

You follow your family tree, you can find a lot of things. Am I responsible for my families slave owning past? No more than I can take credit for Fort Christina being built and any war being won.

[rebel with a cause]

59. Just read an article about the Cherokee wanting to kick out

all those that have any "Black" ancestors from their tribe. It seems that the tribe while in North Carolina, like most other southerners, took slaves and some of those female slaves had their "master's" babies. And those babies and their children were considered part of the Cherokee nation until now.

Geeesh, I can't even be proud of that part of my heritage any more. I give up!!!!!!!!

[Bridget Burke]

23. No. Since when have Presidents come from the lower classes?

Even though Lincoln was born in a log cabin, he was a prosperous lawyer before he went to DC. And Mary Todd's family owned slaves.

Next thing, you'll probably tell us that Democrats & Republicans are just the same.

[Demeter]

47. My Family Wasn't Even Here Until the 20th Century

But no doubt, since Slav is the original slave, there were slaves in my background...

[Penance]

52. Slavs were *not* slaves

"Slav" is from the root word for "word" in the Slavic family of languages (in Czech at least it's "slovo"), hence the ethnic groups Slovakians and Slovenians. Many Slavic languages still call the Germans mutes because they couldn't speak slavic languages properly. (Again in Czech, Germany is "Německo" and mute is "němý".)

Slavs in general have had it pretty rough for a long time, but they certainly weren't slaves.

[Retrograde]

55. if go back a bit further, though,

you find Slavic slaves brought high prices in Byzantium and neighboring slave markets in the earlier part of last millennium. One of the proposed etymologies for the word "slave" is from "Sclavus", a Latin word describing the Slavs.

Slavery's been around for a long time - still is, in some parts of the world. It's not an American invention, nor a European one. Various forms of bondage existed in many parts of the world, including pre-contact America. We're as a whole just not a nice species. While we shouldn't hide the unsavory past, we should spend more time trying to fix today's problems rather than ringing our hands about whether my ancestors were more oppressed than yours, or vice versa.

My own ancestors? Most likely serfs in Eastern Europe around the time of the US Civil War, as far as anyone can tell. Hard to know for certain with one side conspicuously lacking in male ancestors.

[BrokenBeyondRepair]

67. very

[HuffleClaw]

6. so this means BUSH's family history is fair game too ?

lets see some exposes of THAT

[Javaman]

25. Yeah, it seems to me that something just as odious springs to mind

when speaking about morons* family connections...cough cough...nazi's...cough cough...colaborating with the enemy...cough cough...

[caledesi]

39. Let's get more up-to-date in re to * and Laura....

They purchased a house once in an all-white (NO blacks) development. Can't find link. When I do I will post it.

[zanne]

54. Why aren't we digging into Giuliani and McCains's history?

Is it just me, or is all this "digging for dirt" only on one side? It seems like the right wing comes out with something new on the Democratic candidates every day. Where are our researchers?

[Bitwit1234]

8. Owning slaves was wrong but you have to remember

that back in the early 1800's it was an accepted practice. Most people did not think it was wrong. And a lot of people did not whip and starve the slaves, altho a lot did. I find it obnoxious that people owned slaves. You also have to remember that in early England the same thing )sorta) happened. The king and queens and the noblemen owned slaves. And the people in Europe owned the people they conquered.

[Lisa]

42. Adam Hochschild's book about slavery in the British Empire agrees ...

As you say, Bitwit1234, cultures back then had a different view (even though the majority of the world's population were experiencing some kind of bond servitude). "Bury the Chains" points out that even a lot of religious people thought that it was okay ("after all, it's mentioned in the Bible"). Hochschild notes that it took a lot of effort to get people to change their minds, about a widely-accepted practice.

[Bitwit1234]

9. Something else

One of my relatives in 1840 owned a female slave. They were not rich. Fact is they were not even well to do. I don't know why they owned the slave. The female was found listed in the census. In 1850 she was gone and we can not find a record of where she came from or where she went. But that is something you could not hold a present day person responsible for. Since a present day person had no say in the matter how could they hold Obama, Edwards or myself responsible.

[crikkett]

49. Ahem, the WOMAN was found listed in the census.

Let's get it right. It is degrading to call black women FEMALES.

[jhasp]

63. How so?

Aren't female and woman interchangeable?

[izzie]

11. So did mine and they were from Mass.

They were all not Church people.

[DeepModem Mom]

12. Has the Sun dug around in any other candidate's family history?

What was the reason for this, exactly? Would they have done this study if the press had not focused like a laser beam, again and again, on the question of whether Obama is "black" enough? Is this an attempt to prove that he is not "black" enough? The more I think about this, the angrier I get.

I myself found out that some in my family owned slaves when an extended family member gave me a folder of information, and I noticed a mention of slaves in a long-ago will. The surprise, and the sudden personal reality that human beings were bought and sold, jolted me. How did Barack Obama have this same information revealed? How much more difficult was the revelation for him?

I hope he didn't learn about this for the first time from the Baltimore Sun.

[rebel with a cause]

19. They are focusing on Barack's racial identity

in an attempt to place him in a category and to minimize him. Hilary is the woman candidate, Barack is the black candidate, Richardson is the Latino candidate, and etc.

[Orangepeel]

22. hmmm.... this actually highlights how he isn't a "catagory"

He has an interesting and diverse ancestry, with, like all of us, good things and bad things.

[rebel with a cause]

30. exactly, but that won't stop them from trying to get

him into one. It started out that he was

1) "Black"(but then he had white supporters also along with a white mother)
2) inexperienced (he showed that he had plenty of experience including his time in state government)
3) troop hating because he said their lives had been wasted (no body cared, and he also apologized to the troops just in case they
didn't understand what he meant)
4) enemy of Hilary Clinton (Took the high road and did not speak bad of Hilary)
5) not black enough and unsupported by "Black" voters due to polls already taken (Obama ignored it and polls showed that support for
him was growing even among those interviewed that were African American) Oh, heaven save us from the polls and the experts.
Please.
6) descendant of slave owners (time will tell)

* "" around the word Black is too express that this is the word the right wing is emphasizing.

[Igel]

35. It wasn't the Sun, per se.

But a guy working independently, with a 'first draft' of Obama's (and others') genealogies. Aparently the guy's published works on genealogy, so it's not an outrageous thing for him to do.

What's amusing in all this is how people overlook the context and likely motivation for the article: Sharpton's recent discussion of one of his ancestor's having been owned by a relative of Strom Thurmond's. The immediate reaction was to attach even greater moral stigma to Strom Thurmond because some female cousin of his was married to a man that was given one of Sharpton's ancestors, with calls for reparations; the calls for reparation assumed that somehow the Thurmonds acquired wealth because a white Sharpton used a slave to work off debt. In this thread, it's explicit that one isn't responsible for one's ancestors' actions, and in the article someone's quoted as saying having had slave-owning ancestors grants Obama some sort of "experience" with race-relations in this country (a foolish and politically driven comment ... if I may be allowed some redundancy). It's even pointed out that many slave-owning families wound up fairly poor ... whatever wealth they got from owning slaves didn't continue past Reconstruction or the Depression, tacitly blunting the idea of reparations.

[outofbounds]

46. I think your right

I saw a black woman that represented a group or demographic on Colbert. She was saying that Obama's father was not of American descent so people didn't believe has shared the black experience. Meaning he wasn't a descendant of a slave or slave family. I don't know why that would matter, if you are black and in America you have to had experienced some bigotry I believe. Now the media is throwing in that his mom's ancestors owned slaves. It is if they are bound and determined to show him in the worst light they can. Its a shame because Obama seems to be down to earth and exactly the kind of person this country needs right now.

[global1]

13. Our Present pResident Has Turned The Whole U.S. Military Into His Slaves.......

give me a break - they can't swiftboat Obama - so they are 'ancestorswifting' him?

[krispos42]

14. Insert Al Sharpton joke here...

Oh, I'm terrible, just terrible...

[Lisa]

41. so if he and Al have dinner together in Atlanta, it would be Dr. King's dream come to life

"I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood."

I'm even worse than you are ... I suddenly thought that this could be quite the headline-getting DNC fundraiser for 2008, if the two of them were to host such an event!

[CJCRANE]

16. So what.

Grandpa (Prescott) Bush traded with the Nazis. I think that's slightly more relevant.

[semillama]

17. It's interesting from a geneaological perspective

but otherwise, who cares? If you have a long enough family history in this country, you're going to have a connection to slavery somehow, unless you're 100% Native American, and even then it depends on what tribe you're from.

Myself, I had a grandmother from Tennessee, and I'm still probably related to nearly everyone in the town she was from. I went to one of the family reunions from her side once, and they traced the lineage all the way back to Jamestown, 1620. So I figure it's almost a certainty that I'm descended from slave owners.

[pampango]

20. Since his Kenyan father's ancestors were not slaves,

as far as I know, Obama has more ancestors who were slave owners than he does those who were slaves.

If you look black you are black in our society. It is interesting, though, that if monetary reparations for slavery are ever enacted, he will be on the paying rather than receiving end.

Policy positions aside, which I know is a large caveat here at DU, Obama and Hillary both have the precedent setting aspect to their candidacies which would makes makes them intriguing. I'll support whoever survives the primaries, since the only option is not appealing. I am not a partisan of any particular candidate, so I learn a lot here about them all (though most posts deal with what is wrong with other candidates rather than what is right with their favorite.)

[CJCRANE]

28. In fact there were also

slaves and slave traders in Kenya, so it gets even more complicated...

(There was an East African slave trade mainly run by and for the arabs, although some africans were also traders. However as I don't know much about Obama's father's side of the family I couldn't guess about thier status).

[AngryAmish]

21. So Obama owes reparations...

[Hunky Dunky]

44. Nobody owes reparations.

It's a silly concept.

[NashVegas]

24. Cool - He Can Pay Reparations to Himself

Go figure that one.

[pampango]

26. I think he would be a payer, not a.recipient.

He doesn't have any slaves among his ancestors.

[NashVegas]

29. D'oh!

..

[ohio2007]

50. LOL, or he can apologize to himself and move on

maybe his DNA can be tracked back to Virginia plantsations like some east coast politicians

[MsKandice01]

27. I don't see what the big deal is..

I'm black and I know for a fact that two of my great-great-grandfathers were slave owners. My great-great-grandmothers were their slaves. Should I feel ashamed of that? I think these revelations are interesting tidbits of information but that's exactly how they should be treated...interesting tidbits of information...nothing more.

[rebel with a cause]

32. No you should not. feel ashamed at all.

But many of us who are "white" do feel ashamed, because we are the benefactors of that slavery and the biased laws that follow. There is nothing we can do to change the past but there is a heck of a lot we can do to keep from being a part of things like that ever happening again. JMHO

[pampango]

34. If anything I think that this makes Obama more interesting.

As you say, most African Americans will not hold this against him because we have no control over who are ancestors were. We are who we are, not who they were.

Any whites who like what Obama stands for, but have reservations about voting for a black, may be more willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, since he has a "typically American" array of ancestors.

[ohio2007]

51. Slavery is alive and well and living across the oceans in other countries

people prefer to ignore it.
Slavery is an instituion still active on the planet.

[Centered]

62. Agree

Someone wake me up when they find out if HE owned a slave and then I will think it's relevant. I know allot of people like to bash on what a persons father or mother did... or further down the line but please give it a rest. Sins of the fathers and all that.

I personally like Obama and I look forward to knowing more about him before the time comes to vote.

[MasonJar]

31. No one needs to look up the Bush ancestry because Stump is an

abomination all by himself so it hardly matters what his lineage is. Well, with the possible exception of those Nazis!

[auburngrad82]

33. Do you think this is coming out to turn black voters against him?

His ratings among African American voters has really improved lately.

It's actually a good sign that his opposition can't come up with better attacks than "he's not really black" and "his ancestors owned slaves" and "he smokes". Apparently they can't find anything really sleazy to attack him with.

[Thickasabrick]

45. Yes...I don't trust anyone anymore and it would be interesting to

see if this guy who did the research during his "hobby" time made any large deposits recently. I hate being so suspicious.

[ohio2007]

53. This was the plan all along ?

http://www.silive.com/newsflash/metro/index.ssf?/base/news-24/117249924989170.xml&storylist=simetro

A plan hatched in a "New York minute" Sharpton and Hillary or a RW conspirecy to discredit Obama again ?

[rocktivity]

36. ..

:boring:
rocknation

[Joe Chi Minh]

40. It works in the other direction too, not just in terms of slave ownership, as such,

in the US.

According to an article in the UK Daily Mail, there are millions of African-Americans - I think actually tens of millions - descended from William the Conqueror, and that means that they are related to virtually the whole of the families of the medieval nobility.

William was a mean so-and-so to the English people, who could be mutilated or executed for trapping rabbits or deer in the forests; a practice that many had relied on. He wanted the forests in their pristine condition, so that the hunting, a pastime the NOrmans relished, was as good as it could be. Things were never the same again. I believe serfdom amounted to slavery, and in any case, the nobles could do what they wanted to the poorer folk with impunity - murder, rape, whatever.

As well as Scottish, urban officials selling troublesome, criminal compatriots (their descendants can still be found in the West Indies), as indentured servants, i.e. slaves, Corsairs used to kidnap women from English coastal towns, I believe, as late as the 18th century.

As regards Barak Obama, I was struck by the proud (not arrogant) way he naturally holds his head high, and I wonder if it is because his father was Kenyan. Or am I imagining it? He looked a little hunched during that hearing for the Belgian ambassadorship, but it would have been somewhat daunting for any young man. Even so, there was a sense of his being very comfortable, thank you very much, in his own skin.

I remember seeing an American woman on the TV here in the UK, some years ago, who was an anthropologist; and she said that there was something about the African men that struck her as kind of odd, which she couldn't quite put her finger on for a while. Then she realised it was the proud way they held heads, their proud posture. I'm sure too much could be read into it, but I wonder if there is some truth in it, since from an early age, African Americans (and doubtless Afro-Saxons) have to grow up feeling, to put it mildly, extremely uncomfortable about their non-Caucasian colour/admixture.

[raebrek]

43. I don't see how it could hurt him.

I can't think of a reason that it would hurt him. If he were Gore or Hilary maybe it would be different...maybe but probably not. If he were republican it would hang him cause that is just the way it is. But he is none of those. I think it is just going to flow off his back. If anything it shows that the media is clueless and that his family may have been of one mind set but that somewhere down the road it changed and now it isn't like that. Just my two cents worth.

Raebrek!!!

Oh and as far as I know my family did not own slaves back to three generations and then, at least on my fathers side they were in Ireland. My mother always used to say to choose your friends well because you can't choose your relatives.....I would add that you can't choose your ancestors either.

[goforit]

56. Hillary most likely dug this one up.

[mainer]

57. Most American AA's have white slaveowner genes in their DNA

Very few blacks who are multi-generational Americans don't have white genes in their DNA. And chances are, those white genes are from some white slave owner. So how is Obama any different?

[winston61]

58. I have a confession to make-

My grandparents openly encouraged my Mom to masticate and respire in front of other people and in Church!

[JCMach1]

60. Slavery (both sides) are written into the very DNA of our country

and it is more, or less pointless to try sort this out.

American history/heritage should be both proud and ashamed at the same time.

I, for example, have ancestors on both sides in the Civil War. I also have Native American ancestors and white ancestors who fought in the Seminole Wars.

And yes, some branches of my family owned slaves. Others (much earlier) were indentured servants in the Virginia colony.

There is much to ashamed and proud of in our history.

[pookieblue]

61. OMFG they are really reaching now. n/t

[Coventina]

64. Two words: Who cares?

:eyes:

[samscafe]

65. Finally An Example

as to how complicated the notion of which individuals would receive reparations.

[truthisfreedom]

66. Who gives a flying hootie-hoo? WHO CARES?

This is ridiculous. MILLIONS of Americans have to live with their ancestor's having had slaves. What is this, some sort of contest to have the best family history?