This must be a shock for all concerned:
Genealogists have found that civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton is a descendent of a slave owned by relatives of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, a newspaper reported Sunday.
The newspaper reporting the information is The New York Daily News, which hired Ancestry.com to do the research. That paper reports that Sharpton’s emotional response:
With each revelation, the feeling of disbelief grew. His lips drew thin and his face tightened as the findings, projected onto a beige wall, brought home the enormity of the moment.
Sharpton … was stunned to learn how his history was bizarrely intertwined with a man with whom on the surface he had nothing in common – the late right-wing Sen. Strom Thurmond.
Thurmond’s family was equally stunned, with one member denying the possibility:
“That’s a bunch of baloney,” said Barry Bishop, the son of one of Thurmond’s sisters.
“I’ve never heard anything about it,” said Bishop, of Greenville, S.C.
Just because you never heard anything doesn’t make it not so, Mr. Bishop. There were slaves in America, which meant that there were slave owners in America. And there’s a pretty good chance that if your family has been in the US anytime during the period of slavery (1619 – 1865) and you are white, your family owned slaves.
In this post over at RK, Kathy Gerber gives us some excellent statistical information on slavery in Virginia. The NY Daily News articles give us the human side of it.
Technorati Tags: Al Sharpton, Strom Thurmond
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
What “stm” also fails to realize that while slave owenserhip per white southern fell as we get closer to the Civil War, it doesn’t mean slaver owenership ITSELF fell.
vjp – Unless you want to point to the progress that has been made, let’s not make too much of the statistics. Very few people in this country, including the descendents of slave owners still support slavery. No one argues the South did not fight tenaciously to defend slavery. When all is said and done, that is what the Civil War was about.
In fact, few people in the South owned slaves. What the statistics you mention suggest is the slavery was widely supported. Slaves, as “productive property,” can be categorized as means of production. In all times, including our own, the means of production has been owned by relatively few people. Nonetheless, although capital assets may be owned by relatively few people, almost everyone labors. Thus most white citizens in the South found themselves associating in some manner with slaves, and they came to accept slavery as a normal feature in their lives.
George Bernard Shaw once wrote: ““You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, “Why not?”. Unfortunately, most people do accept things as they find them. If Blacks had owned Whites, …. Our sin is being human is not trying hard enough to be better.
Perhaps you miss my point. I only made the comment about slavery ownership in connection with the claim of Bishop.
I think I’ve discussed the progress numerous times.
Rev. Al was good on the Daily Show last night. He is correct in stating that maybe this will bring home to more Americans that slavery is not some ancient myth…many of us knew our great-grandparents…his great grandfather (a human being) was owned. OWNED…