Posted on 03/02/2007 7:49:02 AM PST by dead
WASHINGTON: Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.
But an intriguing snippet of the Illinois senator's family history has received almost no attention until now: It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and US census records.
The records - never addressed publicly by Senator Obama or his relatives - were noted in an ancestry report compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner, who works at the Library of Congress and researches genealogies in his spare time. The report, on Mr Reitwiesner's website, carries a disclaimer that it is a "first draft" - one likely to be examined more closely if the senator from Illinois is nominated.
According to the research, one of Senator Obama's great-great-great-great-grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Kentucky. The same records show that one of Senator Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.
The records show that Overall, then 30, owned a 15-year-old female and a 25-year-old male, while Mary Duvall, his mother-in-law, owned a 60-year-old man and a 58-year-old woman.
An Obama spokesman did not dispute the information and said that the senator's ancestors "are representative of America".
"While a relative owned slaves, another fought for the Union in the Civil War," campaign spokesman Bill Burton said on Thursday. "And it is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya and produce a son who would grow up to be a candidate for president."
It was unclear whether Senator Obama was aware of any slave-holding ancestors.
"You just can't casually throw some documents together and make a sophisticated analysis," said Tony Burroughs, author of Black Roots: A Beginners Guide to Tracing the African American Family Tree.
Senator Obama faces a showdown this weekend in Alabama with Hillary Clinton for black votes. The former president Bill Clinton will make his first campaign appearance with his wife. Senator Obama is keynoting tomorrow's civil rights commemoration in Selma while the Clintons will be at a nearby church. All three will join a march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where state troopers police beat civil rights activists in 1965.
"And it is a true measure of progress that the descendant of a slave owner would come to marry a student from Kenya"
Slave guilt offset marriage?
Hillary Clinton camp in full attack.
Why, this makes him a "man of the people" and a "great uniter" then, doesn't it?
So now let us see and hear Osama Obama stand up in front of the NAACP and crow about "victims of slavery"....hehehe.
Should Obama apologize? Should he pay reparations to himself?
Did his mother's slave owning forebearers own his father's ancestors?
If so, he'd owe himself reparations!
Inquiring minds want to know.....
For the record, I suspect lots of black people are.
Obama Hussein is not responsible for what his ancestors did. He is responsible for what he says and does.
"Should he pay reparations to himself?"
No way- Obama is purely a villain when it comes to slavery, not a victim. After all, he's the descendant of white slaveowners and black Africans who were never enslaved and most likely helped in the slave trade.
Obama might as well be living on a cotton plantation right now. :)
Yes, blacks were enslaved and sold by blacks. And most of the slave traders within Africa itself were either blacks or Arabs.
What made black slavery different from slavery earlier, which as you say was universal, was the racial component. "Race" was pretty much a nineteenth century scientific invention.
Christianity gradually dispensed with slavery in Europe, although you still had serfs and peons and peasants and such. Although Christianity did not immediately outlaw slavery, it is fundamentally incompatible with it, since all souls are created by God. But slavery has been a part of Islam since the beginning, and is strongly supported by Mohammed himself.
I would strongly suggest that Obama not go walking thru a park with Hil-o-ree.
"And that is why I will only pay half of the reparations money you whiteys have to pay..."
Font Color="white">I'm sorry!"
As a genealogist myself, I did some tracking, and also looked at Mr. Reitweisner's work. The tree appears solid. The Mareen Duvall book is very well known in genealogical circles and if St Barack had Duvall ancestors, he has slaveowner ancestors.
Absolutely, it'd be as genuine as Gore buying "carbon offsets" from his own company.
Does this mean he has to pay reparations to himself or to Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson?
Slavery happened, the Crusades happened, the Inquisition happened. Time to stop whining and move on and cure the evil that Mohammad left.
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