{"id":23977,"date":"2012-06-26T01:00:07","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T01:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=23977"},"modified":"2012-07-11T21:51:28","modified_gmt":"2012-07-11T21:51:28","slug":"the-first-family-a-new-glimpse-of-michelle-obama%e2%80%99s-white-ancestors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=23977","title":{"rendered":"The First Family: A New Glimpse of Michelle Obama\u2019s White Ancestors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2012\/06\/22\/us\/first-lady-family-q-and-a.html\" target=\"_blank\">The First Family: A New Glimpse of Michelle Obama\u2019s White Ancestors<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times<\/a><br \/>\n2016-06-22<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/topics\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/s\/rachel_l_swarns\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Rachel L. Swarns<\/strong><\/a>, Correspondent<br \/>\n<em>New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>We knew that the <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=23809\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Sunday article<\/em><\/a><em> about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Michelle_Obama\" target=\"_blank\">Mrs. Obama\u2019s<\/a> white ancestors would stir considerable interest so we decided to invite readers to pose questions and make comments. <strong>We never imagined that one of those readers would provide us with the first glimpse of two key figures in the first lady\u2019s family tree: The white man who owned Mrs. Obama\u2019s great-great-great grandmother, Melvinia Shields, and his son, who most likely fathered Melvinia\u2019s child.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The photograph of those two men and their relatives, which is believed to have been taken in Georgia sometime around 1884, is being published here for the first time.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The slaveowner was Henry Wells Shields, who inherited Melvinia when his father-in-law died in 1852. DNA testing and research indicate that he and his wife, Christian Patterson Shields, are the first lady\u2019s great-great-great-great grandparents&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2012\/06\/22\/us\/first-lady-family-q-and-a.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The First Family: A New Glimpse of Michelle Obama\u2019s 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\u2019s white ancestors would stir considerable interest so we decided to invite readers to pose questions and make comments. We never imagined that one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,6940,20,25],"tags":[11097,2099,2640,2880,9343,2327],"class_list":["post-23977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-slavery","category-usa","category-women","tag-henry-wells-shields","tag-michelle-obama","tag-new-york-times","tag-rachel-l-swarns","tag-rachel-swarns","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}