Both Sides of President Barack Obama's family lead to Africa

From Ancestry.com:

Ancestry.com Discovers President Obama Related to First Documented Slave in America

Research Connects First African-American President to First African Slave in the American Colonies

PROVO, UTAH – July 30, 2012 – A research team from Ancestry.com (NASDAQ:ACOM), the world’s largest online family history resource, has concluded that President Barack Obama is the 11thgreat-grandson of John Punch, the first documented African enslaved for life in American history. Remarkably, the connection was made through President Obama’s Caucasian mother’s side of the family.

The discovery is the result of years of research by Ancestry.com genealogists who, through early Virginia records and DNA analysis, linked Obama to John Punch. An indentured servant in Colonial Virginia, Punch was punished for trying to escape his servitude in 1640 by being enslaved for life. This marked the first actual documented case of slavery for life in the colonies, occurring decades before initial slavery laws were enacted in Virginia.

In the 372 years since, many significant records have been lost – a common problem for early Virginia (and the South in general) – destroyed over time by floods, fires and war. While this reality greatly challenged the research project, Ancestry.com genealogists were able to make the connection, starting with Obama’s family tree.

President Obama is traditionally viewed as an African-American because of his father’s heritage in Kenya. However, while researching his Caucasian mother, Stanley Ann Dunham’s lineage, Ancestry.com genealogists found her to have African heritage as well, which piqued the researchers’ interest and inspired further digging into Obama’s African-American roots. In tracing the family back from Obama’s mother, Ancestry.com used DNA analysis to learn that her ancestors, known as white landowners in Colonial Virginia, actually descended from an African man. Existing records suggest that this man, John Punch, had children with a white woman who then passed her free status on to their offspring. Punch’s descendants went on to be free, successful land owners in a Virginia entrenched in slavery.

An expert in Southern research and past president of the Board for Certification of Genealogists, Elizabeth Shown Mills, performed a third-party review of the research and documentation to verify the findings.

“In reviewing Ancestry.com’s conclusions, I weighed not only the actual findings but also Virginia’s laws and social attitudes when John Punch was living,” said Mills. “A careful consideration of the evidence convinces me that the Y-DNA evidence of African origin is indisputable, and the surviving paper trail points solely to John Punch as the logical candidate. Genealogical research on individuals who lived hundreds of years ago can never definitively prove that one man fathered another, but this research meets the highest standards and can be offered with confidence.”

“Two of the most historically significant African Americans in the history of our country are amazingly directly related,” said Ancestry.com genealogist Joseph Shumway. “John Punch was more than likely the genesis of legalized slavery in America. But after centuries of suffering, the Civil War, and decades of civil rights efforts, his 11th great-grandson became the leader of the free world and the ultimate realization of the American Dream.”

annvic at another site said this in the comments to this story:

it's a possibility that the first enslaved African is the ancestor of the first Black President of the United States of America.

I can't even put into words how this makes me feel.

I had to think about for awhile, and there are a number of things that strike me.

1. I don't want hear nothing about this President ' not being vetted'. He, and his entire family, have been under the microscope, studied like lab rats, since the moment he won the Iowa caucus. Why else all these books about them, and the ' research' into the First Lady's ancestry, which revealed, DUH - that Michelle Obama had White folks in her family tree too...like this is a shock to any Black person in America.

2. I wrote in 2008, when certain folks were feeling so good about Barack Obama, and there was a straign of ' well, he doesn't REALLY have the Black experience, because he's not connected to all that ' BAD STUFF ' (you know, slavery, Jim Crow, etc) - looking at you, Chris Matthews who actually said it..I got more than a little chuckle about the revelation, when they first began to investigate the President's lineage, that, he was indeed, attached to all the ' BAD STUFF' - including the original birth defect of America (thank you Condi Rice) - SLAVERY..through his WHITE SLAVE-OWNING ANCESTORS. Yeah, that's part of all that ' Bad Stuff'. I thought they were gonna leave it alone- researching the President's ancestry- when their journey brought them to the SLAVE MASTER'S DOOR. I should have known better. which brings us to

3. the mere possibility that Barack Obama could be a descendent of one of the first SLAVES IN AMERICA, and that he got that through his WHITE MATERNAL LINE just makes me LMAO. For a country who pretends that the rainbow of shades of Black America in this country happened by magic, instead of the miscegenation that happened, pretty much a nanosecond after the landing of that first slave ship, this would be wicked to the nth degree indeed.

There's nowhere to go....nowhere to hide where the truth about America, and the stain of that original sin that was codified in the founding documents of this country. I've long thought that the President's mother and grandparents never got their due for their obvious good parenting of the President was two fold: a) they want to label his mother a 'race traitor', and b) if they had done such a good job raising him, what's he doing married to Michelle?

That the ' White' mother some cling to as to what made Barack Obama ' different' - like Black folks in America haven't known someone Black in their lives with White relatives - that SHE had African Ancestry - it just cracks me up. That Ann Dunham - ' race traitor' - was a descendent of the original American ' race traitors', and that all that looks ' WHITE' might not be 'WHITE' - which is upsetting to a whole lotta folks in this country.

Many have said that the election of Barack Obama as President exposed so much of America's underbelly, which is why he upsets so many corners of this country.

The racists in this country have to have a sad about this story, because all roads with the first Black President lead BACK TO AFRICA - the Black and White parts.

LOL

Newt Gingrich is “Mr. Covey” in Frederick Douglass’ story

Another gem from zizi2:

Gingrich is “Mr. Covey” in Frederick Douglass’ story
Posted by Zizi2 on May 13th, 2011

Aha! I knew that he reminded me of a very familiar slimy character. Newt Gingrich is a replica of Mr. Edward Covey, the pathetic slave breaker in Frederick Douglass’ autobiography. Like Covey, Gingrich is a has-been deluded about his relevance to society. Like Covey, Gingrich is a sadist. Like Covey, Gingrich is a hypocrite and ethically challenged on all fronts. But unlike Covey, Newtie is not gonna be nobody’s slave breaker here. Oh no. Not gonna happen in these United States, in this or any other lifetime!

Newt can scream all the Obama-is-a-Kenyan-anticolonialist-Mau-mau-sympathiser-so –outside-our –comprehension-conman-destroyer-of-America-as-it-has-been-for-the-last-400 years…..blah blah blah all he wants, but he cannot bring PBO down. Neither will he even have the chance to debate the President on any stage, real or imagined.


Douglass fights Covey

Here’s a little historical/literary refresher for those not very familiar with who Covey was: In Chapter X of his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave”, Frederick Douglass recounts the lowest point of his life as a slave, when he was sent to Edward Covey by his master Thomas to be “broken”, because he was considered incorrigible. Covey was a down-on-his-luck white overseer who owned no real slave estate of his own, but fancied himself a mean whip-cracker who could bring any slave to his knees. As Douglass recounts about Covey:

He seldom approached the spot where we were at work openly, if he could do it secretly. He always aimed at taking us by surprise. Such was his cunning, that, we used to call him, among ourselves, “the snake.”

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Everytime you hear about the ' honor of the Old South', NEVER forget what it was built on

I found these pictures at Zimbio:

This is a Civil War Era Slave Sale Re-enactment in St. Louis.


A mock flyer is posted advertising the re-enactment of a mid-19th century slave auction January 15, 2011 in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. Some 150 re-enactors participated in the mock-auction on the steps of the city's Old Courthouse, as the first commemorative event in Missouri marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. With other sesquicentennial events in the South emphasizing "states rights" as the cause of the conflict, organizers in St. Louis said they wanted to stress slavery as the central issue of the war. Before the war, St. Louis, with its location on the Mississippi River, had been a primary hub for the sale and movement of slaves. The U.S. Civil War, which lasted from 1861-1865, resulted in the death of more than 600,000 Americans, more than in all of the country's other wars combined.
----Photo by John Moore/Getty Images North America


In This Photo: Jannett White
Slave re-enactor Jannett White is led off in shackes after being "auctioned" during a re-enactment of a mid-19th century slave auction January 15, 2011 in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. Some 150 re-enactors participated in the mock-auction on the steps of the city's Old Courthouse, as the first commemorative event in Missouri marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. With other sesquicentennial events in the South emphasizing "states rights" as the cause of the conflict, organizers in St. Louis said they wanted to stress slavery as the central issue of the war. Before the war, St. Louis, with its location on the Mississippi River, had been a primary hub for the sale and movement of slaves. The U.S. Civil War, which lasted from 1861-1865, resulted in the death of more than 600,000 Americans, more than in all of the country's other wars combined.
---Photo by John Moore/Getty Images North America

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Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour Also Ignored Slavery in His Confederate Heritage Proclamation

They Are Yearning for the Days of the Old Confederacy

After he defended Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell for omitting slavery from his States Confederate remembrance, it turns out that Haley Barbour made the same glaring omission in his State's proclamation. He seemed to go out of his way to purposely leave out any mention of slavery. I suspect they may be doing this to rile up their supporters. Both Governors may be interested in running for President or VP in 2012. This may be red meat for the Conservative Tea Party base.

Yes, there are definitely more important concerns that we should be focused on... and Republicans would probably love it if we were distracted by Barbour's antics. However, these reports, along with the other comments and activities by the Right point to a certain kind of state of mind that I believe should be illuminated. I think it says a lot about how they view the world, what they believe in, and who they really are. Eugene Robinson points this out very nicely in his commentary on the subject.

These kinds of political antics are taking place at the same time that we are hearing reports about segregation in Mississippi schools. Post racial my ass. I'm not even sure what year this is. I had to check the calender, not sure if I had slipped back in time into some other decade. But the calender says 2010. Notice the overriding pattern? There is a larger context to all of this. It pisses me off when apologists for the radical Right discuss these matters in a vacuum.... in separate little pieces, ignoring patterns and the larger context. Facts tell us one thing, but some in the mainstream corporate media suggest that we should ignore what is right in front of our faces. They want us to believe that the sky is pink, and that the earth is flat....that what we are seeing is just a figment of our imagination. It's not just the wider context of current events that they seem to ignore, they also love to ignore historical context, as Eugene Robinson pointed out.

What's even more annoying than all the talk about the loony Tea Party, the radical Right, and their romanticizing of the Confederacy, is the fact that thickheaded American voters are going to put these jackasses into office, certainly at the State and Congressional levels, in November of this year and in 2012, despite these reports, and despite solid recent history that shows their policies failing. This whole thing (the Right's activities over the past decade and their use of propaganda, especially since 2007) says more about the deficiencies of Progressives and their complete lack of an effective media infrastructure, than it says about how crazy the Right is. If you can't effectively mount a defense against such incredibly crazy propaganda and effectively educate the American public (which is in desperate need of good information and deprogramming).... then to me, this may be the more pressing issue. It points to an emergency within the Progressive movement in this Country. If there is no effort to fix it and fix it soon- with a complete revamping of Progressive strategy, infrastructure... and with policies like the Fairness Doctrine - then this Country is going to be in serious trouble. Progressives & Democrats are certainly going to pay a price.

I'm losing more faith in this Country and the World with each passing day.

Obama’s National Service Plan= SLAVERY? Oh really?

Jonah Goldberg's at it again.

Today in a LATimes op-ed, he compares Senator Obama's National Service plan to SLAVERY.

There's a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

For those who don't remember, the 13th Amendment says: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime ... shall exist within the United States."

In his speech on national service Wednesday at the University of Colorado, Obama promised that as president he would "set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year."

He would see that these goals are met by, among other things, attaching strings to federal education dollars. If you don't make the kids report for duty, he's essentially telling schools and college kids, you'll lose money you can't afford to lose. In short, he'll make service compulsory by merely compelling schools to make it compulsory.

I love how these clowns believe that they can just throw around SLAVERY as if it's a 'phrase du jour'. No, you can't just throw around SLAVERY like that. Not for something intellectually dishonest, and a comparison that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Obama's plan is based on quite conservative (small c) principles: You want help from your government, then how about helping out your fellow Americans first.

Um, am I the only one hearing echos of 'Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country' in the Obama proposal?

Am I also the only one who sees the 'social gospel' of Christian teachings in this?

I won't even get into ' each one, teach one' philosphy of this.

Some more thoughts about Goldberg's babbling:

1. Who said that Obama would scrub the stain of racism? Certainly not Obama.

2. A crime to be born? Explain that idiocy to me.

3. A crime to go to college? No, Goldberg, the crime is the capabale student who WANTS to go to college, but can't because they can't AFFORD IT. See, Barack and Michelle Obama understand that they've been afforded the opportunities that they've been able to take advantage of, because the OPPORTUNITY to get an education was POSSIBLE. Something that FINANCIAL CIRCUMSTANCES have cut away for many a QUALIFIED student in today's America.

But, I guess that's not YOUR America, so you could care less about the doors of OPPORTUNITY being shut to present and future generations. That you don't understand that ECONOMIC MOBILITY in this country has been tied to EDUCATION, for those of us not born to trust funds, or Mommys and Daddys that can give us ' the hook up'. Something, once again, from a world that YOU, Goldberg, know nothing about, but 'elitists' Barack and Michelle Obama, both of whom come from families with no silver spoons, understand all too well.

4. Think about a mind that would attack a program that entails teaching youth, who are perenially self-centered, that there is something larger out there than yourselves, and to demand that they reach outside of themselves and participate in the world around them.

The criticism of this says more about Goldberg's mental depravity than Barack Obama's Service Plan.

This is what Senator Obama ACTUALLY said in his speech in Colorado:

As President, I will launch a new Social Investment Fund Network. It's time to get the grass roots, the foundations, the faith-based organizations, the private sector and the government at the table so that we can learn from our own success stories. We'll invest in ideas that work; leverage private sector dollars to encourage innovation; and expand successful programs to scale. Take a program like the Harlem Children's Zone, which helps thousands of kids in New York through after-school activities, mentoring, and family support. We need to make that model work in different cities across America. And just as we support small businesses, I'll start a new Social Entrepreneur Agency to make sure that small non-profits have strong support from Washington.

Finally, we need to integrate service into education, so that young Americans are called upon and prepared to be active citizens.

Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously. Study after study shows that students who serve do better in school, are more likely to go to college, and more likely to maintain that service as adults. So when I'm President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service.

We'll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities. At the community level, we'll develop public-private partnerships so students can serve more outside the classroom.

For college students, I have proposed an annual American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000. To receive this credit, we'll require 100 hours of public service. You invest in America, and America invests in you - that's how we're going to make sure that college is affordable for every single American, while preparing our nation to compete in the 21st century.

Bottom line?


And, as another poster put it, " Obama’s college service plan provides $4000 per year for 100 hours of service each year you’re on the plan.

When did $40 per hour become slavery?"