As my friend Skot Welch and I prepare for our weekly radio show (Radio in Black and White) we pour over dozens of articles – more than 60 every week.  It is rare that one of them strikes me as deeply as the story I read about Michelle Obama’s ancestors.  Slavery – “America’s original sin and ongoing national dilemma” (Bill Bradley) – is a legacy no one wants to talk about but it is an essential conversation.  This is an American story – complex, familiar, deeply painful.

The New York Times article begins with an elderly master of a small estate in South Carolina in 1850 dividing up his possessions as he prepares his will.  Included in the itemization of spinning wheels, tablecloths and cattle is a six year old “negro girl”named Melvinia valued at $475.  When her master dies, she is quickly shipped to Georgia where as a teenager she comes in contact with a white man who “would father her first born son.”

The word “father” in this context is both ambiguous and euphemistic and does not account for the brutality of the slave system.  Because of the disingenuous mythology of the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemmings “love story” we’re left with the impression that romance, consensual sex and intimacy were a “normal” part of these unions.  Not possible in the context of bondage!  Melvinia – like many teenage slave women were forced to have sex with their masters.  Highly probable that this “unknown white man” was just another serial rapist layered into a “peculiar institution” with complete impunity.

Remarkable to think that Melvinia Shields (the last name she later adopted) and this white man are the great, great, great grandparents of the First Lady of the United States.  Difficult to imagine how a six year old, illiterate slave girl who lived in the consumate disorientation of fear and oppression left a legacy that ended with her Harvard educated (great/great/great) granddaughter in charge of the White House.  Gives a whole new layer of meaning to Maya Angelou’s compelling line – “and still we rise.”  Indeed you did – indeed you do.

As Slavery continues to pay its way forward in moral poison (Frederick Douglas) and social cancer (Dr. Martin Luther King) fueled by unearned privilege (Peggy Macintosh), I am profoundly sorry for the complicity of my Irish ancestors responsible for bringing Melvinia here.  And I am determined to break the choke hold of white supremacy that hurts all of us.

So Melvenia you are slavery’s child – in your time,  just a piece of property to be bought and sold for $475, part of the chattel of a dying white man.  How could anyone have known how valuable you were and are to all of us?  You and your story are priceless!  I will never forget you – I hope none of us ever do.