There is yet another story on First Lady Michelle Obama’s slave roots. I wasn’t going to post on it, but given the recent comments on older post (…Slave Ancestry Explored and …Slave Roots) it is apparent that our readers are looking for something, so here we go, again.
I read about this over on postbourgie. The New York Times has conducted a study on First Lady Michelle Obama’s ancestry.
“In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.
In his will, she is described simply as the “negro girl Melvinia.” After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.
In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.
Melvinia Shields, the enslaved and illiterate young girl, and the unknown white man who impregnated her are the great-great-great-grandparents of Michelle Obama, the first lady.
Viewed by many as a powerful symbol of black advancement, Mrs. Obama grew up with only a vague sense of her ancestry, aides and relatives said. During the presidential campaign, the family learned about one paternal great-great-grandfather, a former slave from South Carolina, but the rest of Mrs. Obama’s roots were a mystery.
Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama’s ancestors — including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields — for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency.
The findings — uncovered by Megan Smolenyak, a genealogist, and The New York Times — substantiate what Mrs. Obama has called longstanding family rumors about a white forebear.”
To read the study click here.
So there it is, another report that confirms what the eye can see. It’s a fact people get over it. Yes the First Lady of the United States is a descendant of slaves. Yes her ancestors were the victims of miscegenation and I’m almost certain that it was not “under circumstances lost in the passage of time.”
Posted by Aminah Hanan
7 Comments, Comment or Ping
admin
YAAAWN to the NY Times. Didn’t they already to this story? In addition, most Black folks in these parts can point to their White Ancestors. My great grandmother was born in the late 1800’s Big YAWN
The New York times COULD have spent resources doing some journalism on any number of things happening NOW, but they went to try to sensationalize slavery. Get over it. If they want to drag up slavery, tell some of the really true horrors.
Oct 8th, 2009
Honoree
I agree. This is a really boring story, and what’s worse, an infuriating story when all these people online are like, “Wow! This is really a shock!” A shock that most black people have white ancestry, and that most of it came from slave masters who raped young black girls they “owned”? This is historical amnesia at its worst.
Oct 8th, 2009
Aminah Hanan
@ADMIN yes this is a snooza palooza. It’s almost like we’re sitting in a public thearpy session.
@HONOREE yes historical amnesia indeed. “…under circumstances lost in the passage of time.” What a bunch of BS. My great grandmother that passed in 2002 knew about those “circumstances” and she lived through Jim Crow. Imagine those “circumstances” during slavery. I think the word we use now is rape. And please for heaven’s sake, don’t any one on this blog tell me there were instances where slaves had consenual sex with a slave master.
Oct 8th, 2009
NitaShay
That’s crazy for you people to put out anything on Mrs. Obama webpage talking about her passage of time. Is it that a black couple made it to the white house or is it that you are trying to down grade her because of what happen to her great-great-great grandmother back in slavery. How could you fix your mouth to bring up something about a black woman, that had a slave great-great-great grandmother. Know that it was always blacks that created anything that you could think of, that knew how to survive, it was the whites that didn’t have a clue of what was going on around, so what did they do; they inslave the blacks and made us do the work for them, and they started rapping us creating mixblood kids so don’t try to tell us anything about a horror experience in slavery, when the whites was the one’s who violate us as blacks’. So you people need to leave Mrs. Obama alone and get educated.
Oct 8th, 2009
Mike
A slave is a slave is a slave, says Gertrude Stein
Oct 10th, 2009
Yonnie3k
“under circumstances that have been lost in the passage of time” is a slap in the face and a very poor and cowardly choice of words by the NYT.
Having said that, Ms. Hanan, you are also guilty of poor word choice. Her ancestors were “victims of miscegenation?” Miscegenation is simply marriage, cohabitation, or procreation b/w the races. So in this case, was Barack Obama’s mother the “victim” of miscegenation? Was Halle Berry’s mother or Mariah Carey’s mother? Michelle’s ancestor was (likely) the victim of rape, not miscegenation. The two are not synonymous.
Oct 14th, 2009
Aminah Hanan
@YONNIE 3K the word “victim” qualifies miscegenation. Victim as in a person who suffers from a destructive or injurious action (or force). Someone that is harmed or murdered (including the spirit) or offered as a sacrifice (so that we live to tell the story today). Victim as in the hunted, the innocent, a sufferer, a wretch if you will. Cohabitation nor procreation delineates force. There were many Black women that cohabitated (bed warmers) and procreated (produced offspring) with slave masters, but they were indeed victims.
Please check my previous reply to this post and you will read the word
RAPE. Then check the title of this blog. With all due respect, it is not Ann Dunham Watch, Halle Berry Watch, or Mariah Carey Watch. It’s not even my maternal grandfather’s watch. It is Michelle Obama Watch.
Please note that you’re speaking to a health care professional trained in incest, rape, and sexual abuse counseling, who is pursuing a masters in African American Literature, with a focus on historical fiction and nonfiction. I know the definition of rape, rather it be in antebellum or contemporary context. I think we’re on the same side here. Let’s not strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.
Now I’m turning off my Public Enemy “Revolutionary Generation” background music and getting back to Michelle Obama Watching.
Thank You,
Mrs Aminah Hanan
PS I could delve into your choice of the word “likely” in antebellum context, but I won’t.
Oct 14th, 2009