{"id":6911,"date":"2010-05-01T05:13:40","date_gmt":"2010-05-01T05:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=6911"},"modified":"2011-11-14T00:13:52","modified_gmt":"2011-11-14T00:13:52","slug":"in-first-lady%e2%80%99s-roots-a-complex-path-from-slavery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=6911","title":{"rendered":"In First Lady\u2019s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"

In First Lady\u2019s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2009-10-08<\/p>\n

Rachel L. Swarns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jodi Kantor<\/strong><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina<\/a> estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes<\/a>, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.<\/p>\n

In his will, she is described simply as the \u201cnegro girl Melvinia.\u201d After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia<\/a>. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala.<\/a>, to Chicago<\/a> and, finally, to the White House<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, the first lady…<\/p>\n

While <\/strong>President Obama\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> biracial background has drawn considerable attention, his wife\u2019s pedigree, which includes American Indian strands, highlights the complicated history of racial intermingling, sometimes born of violence or coercion, that lingers in the bloodlines of many African-Americans.<\/strong> Mrs. Obama and her family declined to comment for this article, aides said, in part because of the personal nature of the subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is representative of how we have evolved and who we are,\u201d said Edward Ball<\/a>, a historian who discovered that he had black relatives, the descendants of his white slave-owning ancestors, when he researched his memoir, \u201cSlaves in the Family.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not separate tribes of Latinos and whites and blacks in America,\u201d Mr. Ball said. \u201cWe\u2019ve all mingled, and we have done so for generations.\u201d…<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In First Lady\u2019s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery The New York Times 2009-10-08 Rachel L. Swarns Jodi Kantor WASHINGTON \u2014 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,63,459,6,6940,394,20],"tags":[2882,2881,2099,2880,2327],"class_list":["post-6911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-history","category-new-media","category-slavery","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-edward-ball","tag-jodi-kantor","tag-michelle-obama","tag-rachel-l-swarns","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6911","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=6911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}