A look inside political leaders’ family ties to slavery

A new study has discovered at least 100 members of the last sitting Congress had direct family ancestors who were slaveholders, as does every living American president except Donald Trump. The discovery serves as a reminder of America’s complicated relationship with the past. NBC’s Harry Smith reports in this week’s Sunday Spotlight.

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#Congress #History #AmericanHistory

[almar]

All the other living Ex-US Presidents have ancestors who were in America during the time of slavery, Trump does not because his family were in Germany at the time. His grandfather was the first Trump to come to America: Born and raised in Kallstadt, Kingdom of Bavaria, Frederick Trump immigrated to the United States in 1885. In 1891, he began speculating in real estate in Seattle. During the Klondike Gold Rush, he moved to the Yukon and made his fortune by operating a restaurant and a brothel for miners in Whitehorse.

In 1901, Trump returned to Kallstadt and married Elisabeth Christ. As he had purportedly immigrated to the United States in order to evade conscription, the Bavarian Government stripped him of his citizenship in 1905. As a result, he returned to the United States with his family - after slavery ended.

[kevinmicrosoft]

Many black people owned slaves in America as well.

[TheHarveyTruthInc]

For starters, I believe these political leaders whose families owned slaves, should pay reparations to the decedents of those slaves. It appears that they do not want to acknowledge this because they benefited from the free labor and the wealth from these slaves.

[txlonghorn]

1. How many of us would want to be held accountable for the actions of our ancestors?
2. Everyone involved in slavery, either slave holder or slave, is long dead.
3. We have enough to do today holding people accountable for their actions today.

[dnifty]

The colonies of the United States were all chartered companies created in Britain for the express purpose of creating plantations and using free labor of the natives or whoever else they could get. The governance of the colony was based on an assembly made up of all the largest plantation owners called the House of Burgesses. You could not be a member of this body without being a plantation/land owner. Many of the founding fathers were members of this assembly due to them being large plantation owners. And of the founding fathers, George Washington was one of the biggest, getting many of his chattel workers from his wife Martha who was previously married to a British plantation owner named Custis in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson was also a large plantation owner and member of the house of Burgesses.

The House of Burgesses is the blue print and model for most state and federal assemblies across the country. Even after independence, many state officials were plantation owners along with councilmen, mayors, judges and so forth. Because the colony itself was founded on the idea of land and people owning elites running the country and using their wealth to innovate and create new ideas for the future. This is also why so many of the earliest universities also had ties to the plantations as well. You can go to almost any state in the South and find numerous historic markers for key government officials who were plantation owners. Many of whom are the name sakes of those who formerly were their property and many of these plantation houses are preserved along with documents related to their history. So the only people who didn't know this are those who believe in the mythology of American history.

[peni]

If you're going to tell it tell it right. Tell how various Africna naitons like Nigeria, Togo, Cameroon, Congo, Senagal sold other Africans to various countries. Any talks about reparations needs to be directed toward various African nations who are responsible

[Julio-jmld]

Teaching is fine, but stop acting like these people had anything to do with choices made by anyone 100+ years ago. Shi*s got to stop

[callicordova]

Slavery was cruel and abhorrent, but you don't get to choose your ancestors. How you behave now is what matters.

[sharonsanderson]

Why should we be held accountable for our ancestors past?

[Shanniereb]

So?....I don't get it, why is the purpose of these type of stories! Owning slaves was not illegal at that time, so quite using presentism to judge the past generations.

[WillByars]

Tbh…you wonder why we can’t move forward from our past, it’s because of crap like this. 3 generations later and you want to chastise people who had no say in what their grandparents did at a time that was completely different than it is now. How much more apologizing do you want? Saying sorry isn’t good enough, then what’s next? Move on America! Move on.

[weirdmatter]

We can heal and move forward as well. I have never judged a person by the color of their skin, only by the content of their characters.

[brianacuff]

In this context I'm more offended by the attempt to associate people with the sins of their fathers than I'm offended by those sins.

Slavery and guilt via Sins of the Father are equally un-American.

[clementgavi]

It can also be a look inside Africa to sense given to such a past.
How a continent that has suffered such past can still be a place where human being can be born to suffer and suffer from a tyranny?
How a continent with such a history can be a sphere where people must die, flee, imprinsoned, persecuted simply because the dare to want to be free.
To what extent does it make sense to a world that has become, in other words, that has such a page of its history, can be still be a world that gathers millions whose ancestors have suffered the madness of slavery in the framework of a cooperation and then say it is a 60-year-old bloody dynastic tyranny of West Africa that represents death and suffering, deprivation and misery to thousands and thousands, which is the chief negotiator for nations of Africa, Caribbean and Pacific?
Maybe be we should look inside the world's ties to slavery, since we are in a world where life of some millions and millions, often the same, seems to be always a prey. That's why a bloody dynastic dictatorship is erected as the horizon and the perspective for nations of Africa and Caribbean in other words the mass of the exploited.

[JohnDoe-yckx]

Those family members that had family members who owned slaves need to pay reparation and start from living in the ghetto.

[smokindauberdoo]

I'm pretty sure that Obama didn't