not just her slave roots, but her white

(i'm guessing by force, it appears melvina  was 14 or 15 when she was impregnated) roots too. the nyt and a genealogist (megan smolenyak) delve into the roots of michelle obama. i know where all of my people came from (country wise and in my case even town wise). descendants of slaves usually DO NOT know where there people came from. think about it

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

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, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House............

pic:

Barack Obama Campaign

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


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