The United States of America, one of the oldest democracies in the world, has had a history of slavery and oppression. Although slavery was abolished in the US with the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865 following the Civil War, the discussion around slavery still holds relevance.
In its investigative report, Reuters found that a fifth of all members of Congress, all living presidents except for former US President Donald Trump, Supreme Court justices, and governors are direct descendants of ancestors who enslaved Black people.
According to Reuters, at least 100 members of the last Congress descended from slaveholders. More than a quarter of the Senate, or 28 members, can trace their ancestors back to at least one slaveholder.
President Joe Biden and every living former US president, with the exception of Donald Trump, are direct descendants of slaveholders— Jimmy Carter, George W Bush, Bill Clinton, and even Barack Obama, by way of his white mother’s side. Notably, Donald Trump’s ancestors immigrated to the United States after slavery was abolished.
Members of Congress from the 117th Congress who are descendants of slave owners include both Democrats and Republicans. They include Republican senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, and James Lankford, as well as Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Duckworth, Jeanne Shaheen, and Maggie Hassan.
The report further states that in the year 2022, 11 of the 50 states in the United States had governors who were descendants of slaveholders. They include the eight chief executives of the Confederate States of America, which seceded and waged war for the preservation of slavery. Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, and Doug Burgum of North Dakota are both running for the Republican presidential nomination.
Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, two of the nine sitting US Supreme Court justices, have direct ancestors who enslaved people.
The Reuters report claims that none of the 118 leaders identified by Reuters denied that at least one of their ancestors enslaved people, but few were willing to discuss this subject. When they emailed the identified leaders to comment on their slaveholding ancestors, only a quarter of them opted to do so.
Representative Julia Brownley of California, a Democrat, was among those who responded after Reuters emailed her a document about her ancestor Jesse Brownley. Her ancestor enslaved three people in Portsmouth, Virginia, according to the 1850 census. One of them was an eight-year-old girl.
Interestingly, in 2021 it was reported that two of President Joe Biden’s ancestors owned three slaves. The revelation was made by genealogist Alexander Bannerman.
Bannerman, who wrote the book found that Biden’s great-great-great-grandfather, Jesse Robinett, owned two slaves in Allegany County, Maryland, in the 1800 census.
According to Bannerman, Biden’s third-great-grandfather, Thomas Randle, owned a 14-year-old male slave in Baltimore County, Maryland, in 1850, with the 1860 Census still showing Randle owning one person after the family migrated to another part of the county.
Juneteenth Day
The Reuters findings come at a time US President Joe Biden announced the celebration of Juneteenth Day on June 19. “I call upon the people of the United States to acknowledge and condemn the history of slavery in our Nation and recognize how the impact of America’s original sin remains. I call on every American to celebrate Juneteenth and recommit to working together to eradicate systemic racism and inequity in our society wherever they find it,” President Biden’s proclamation read.
The term Juneteenth, created by combining the words “June” and “nineteenth,” commemorates the day in 1865, two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and immediately after the Civil War, when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free.
Despite freeing slaves in Confederate states, the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately put an end to slavery in territories controlled by the Confederacy, such as Texas. The arrival of Union troops in Galveston on June 19, 1865, led by Major General Gordon Granger brought the announcement of freedom to over 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state. Granger delivered the historic General Order No. 3 announcing the abolishment of legalized slavery in Texas.
