Lost in the uproar over his religious roots and his middle name (Hussein), is perhaps the more interesting and controversial slave-owning legacy of Barack Obama's maternal side of the family.
OH NO YOU DID-INT!
Oh yes, I guess I just did, but it's not just me, the Baltimore Sun ran the initial article at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/politics/bal-obama0301,0,789030.story?coll=bal-home-headlines titled A New Twist to an Intriguing Family History.
And yazzem, it is all that. It seems the records were first noted by William Addams Reitwiesner, who works at the Library of Congress and does genealogy in his spare time.
Obama's Mama's Dirty Laundry
According to Reitwiesner one of Obama's great-great-great-great-grandfather's George Washington Overall owned two slaves, recorded in the 1850 census and that one of his great-great-great-great-grandmothers, a Mary Duvall also owned two slaves.
The Baltimore Sun claims to have retraced "much of Reitwiesner's work" and confirms that the records show that Overall, then 30 years old, owned a fifteen year old black female and a 25 year old black male, while Mary Duvall owned a 60 year old black man and a 58 year old black woman. A notation makes clear that slaves were listed by owner, age, sex and color, not by name in the 1850 census.
A Good Time Was Had By All
When contacted, an Obama spokesman did not dispute the information, saying only that the Senator's ancestors "are representative of America."
Do tell!
My father's ancestors came from Ireland just before the Civil War and went from the docks right into a war that was at least partly exacerbated by that particular issue.
My Mom's side of the family came here from Northern Italy just prior to the turn of the 20th Century. Barack Obama's ancestors aren't representative of my own, nor those of anyone I know.
I suppose Barack Obama could relate to black America in this way, "I know the roots of slavery personally, as they've touched my family too...well, no, we weren't actually ENSLAVED, but we sure did OWN a few."
The more I think of it, the easier I could see Barack Obama in Bill Murray's Stripes, with Murray as the de facto drill seargent bellowing, "What kind of black man are you?"
With Obama responding, "The slave-master bastard kind, I guess, SIR!"
