In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery (NYT)

[jefferson_dem]

In First Lady’s Roots, a Complex Path From Slavery
By RACHEL L. SWARNS and JODI KANTOR


Fraser Robinson III and his wife, Marian, with their children, Craig and Michelle, now the first lady.

WASHINGTON — 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, marked 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 remained a mystery.

<SNIP>

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/us/politics/08genealogy.html?_r=1

[XemaSab]

1. Posted earlier in GD, but a good read nevertheless

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6719003

[DangerousRhythm]

2. Wow... thank you for this!

I find genealogical roots to be fascinating!

[Drunken Irishman]

3. Wow, Michelle looks just like her mother...

And Craig looks just like his father! That's awesome.

Thanks for this!

[Captain Hilts]

4. I love articles like this. History needs a context for many people and this does it.

It's interesting, a year ago I was hanging outside the Library of Congress waiting for someone from out of town. I was sitting on a big block of granite and a black fellow, probably a few years older than I, held down the other side of the block. He asked if he could light a cigar and I told him it was fine by me. We got to talking and he mentioned that his grandfather had been a slave. There was a pause and I said, "I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but...that's kind of cool. It makes a real connection to history." He thought about it for a moment and said, "Yeah, it IS kinda cool." I then told him how my grandfather and his sister - at ages 8 and 9 had been sent to work on SEPARATE farms outside Montreal when their parents in Liverpool were killed in the IRA. Their elder siblings were sent on their own - the eldest son being placed in the Royal Navy. My grandfather came over as kind of an indentured servant. This guy noted that that was a kind of slavery.

Ain't life strange. And it used to really suck for a lot of people. That article is cool.

I just remembered, my great grandmother signed her marriage license with an 'X' because girls weren't school in Ireland.

[Cha]

5. Such a neat family and they produced

our Michelle and Craig the Basketball coach at Oregon State.

http://www.osubeavers.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/040609aaa.html

[question everything]

6. Facinating. ABC News also described this

I wonder how they managed to track down all the ancestrs.