Category: Slavery

  • Michelle’s Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy—and Yours The Root 2009-10-08 Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research Harvard University First Lady Michelle Obama’s maternal third-great-grandfather was a white man who fathered Melvinia Shields’ (her maternal third great-grandmother) son, Dolphus T. Shields, both slaves.…

  • The Founder of the American Protective League Says the Poor Whites Are Not to Blame For Racial Amalgamation.

  • The author presents a comparative analysis of the histories of racial/color categorization in American and Brazilian censuses and shows that racial (and color) categories have appeared in these censuses because of shifting ideas about race and the enduring power of these ideas as organizers of political, economic, and social life in both countries.

  • Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the Making of Race in Colonial Peru University of Pittsburgh Press April 2012 272 pages 6 x 9 Paper  ISBN: 9780822961932 Rachel Sarah O’Toole, Associate Professor of History University of California, Irvine Bound Lives chronicles the lived experience of race relations in northern coastal Peru during the colonial era. Rachel Sarah…

  • The First Family: A New Glimpse of Michelle Obama’s White Ancestors The New York Times 2016-06-22 Rachel L. Swarns, Correspondent New York Times We knew that the Sunday article about Mrs. Obama’s white ancestors would stir considerable interest so we decided to invite readers to pose questions and make comments. We never imagined that one…

  • Slavery, Race, and Reunion: The NY Times White Washes the Rape of Michelle Obama’s Ancestors (Again) We Are Respectable Negroes 2012-06-18 Chauncey DeVega Why would any person honor rapist’s blood? In an effort to write the Obamas, who are de facto American royalty, back into a larger post-racial narrative that ostensibly makes some white folks…

  • American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama HarperCollins 2012-06-19 400 pages Trimsize: 6 x 9 Hardback ISBN: 9780061999864; ISBN10: 0061999865 Rachel L. Swarns, Correspondent New York Times A remarkable history of First Lady Michelle Obama’s mixed ancestry, American Tapestry by Rachel L. Swarns is nothing less than a…

  • Meet Your Cousin, the First Lady: A Family Story, Long Hidden The New York Times 2012-06-16 Rachel L. Swarns This article is adapted from “American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama” by Rachel L. Swarns, to be published by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, on Tuesday. REX,…

  • Passing free Boston College Magazine Summer 2003 Black in the South, Irish in the North, The Healys Slipped the Bonds of Race in Civil War America James M. O’Toole, Associate Professor of History Boston College When Michael Morris Healy and Eliza Clark entered into a common-law union in 1829, they violated perhaps the most powerful…

  • Don’t Pass on Context: The Importance of Academic Discourses in Contemporary Discussions on the Multiracial Experience Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival Japanese American National Museum Los Angeles, California 2011-06-11 Steven F. Riley The following is the slightly modified text from my opening remarks. As we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the…