Michelle Obama's family: From slavery to White House By Dahleen Glanton and Stacy St. Clair Chicago Tribune http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008466925_obamaslavery04.html Tiny wooden cabins line the dirt road once known as Slave Street as it winds through Friendfield Plantation. More than 200 slaves lived in the whitewashed shacks in the early 1800s, and some of their descendants remained for more than 100 years after the Civil War. The last tenants abandoned the hovels about 30 years ago, and even they would have struggled to imagine a distant daughter of the plantation one day calling the White House home. But a historical line can be drawn from these Low Country cabins to Michelle Obama, charting an American family's improbable journey through slavery, segregation, the civil-rights movement and a historic presidential election. Their documented passage begins with Jim Robinson, Michelle Obama's great-great-grandfather, who was born about 1850 and lived as a slave, at least until the Civil War, on the sprawling rice plantation. Records show he remained on the estate after the war, working as a sharecropper and living in the old slave quarters with his wife, Louiser, and their children. He could neither read nor write, according to the 1880 census. Robinson would be the last illiterate branch of Michelle Obama's family tree. Census records show each generation of Robinsons became more educated than the last, with Michelle Obama eventually earning degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. Her older brother, Craig, also earned an Ivy League education. Barack Obama's campaign hired genealogists to research the family's roots at the onset of his presidential bid, but aides largely have kept the findings secret. Genealogists at Lowcountry Africana, a research center at the University of South Florida in Tampa, scoured documents to put together a 120-page report, said project director Toni Carrier. She said the center signed a confidentiality agreement and is not allowed to disclose the findings publicly. However, in his now-famous speech on race during the primary, Barack Obama, whose father was from Kenya, stated he was "married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners." Obama aides refused to discuss the report or allow Michelle Obama to be interviewed about her ancestry. She has said she knew little about her family tree before the campaign, but census reports, property records and other historical documents show her paternal ancestors bore witness to one of the most shameful chapters in U.S. history. In January, when the Obamas move into the White House â a mansion built partially by slaves â as the country's first African-American first family, Michelle Obama will embark upon a life her great-great-grandfather never could have envisioned. Living in slave shacks Little is known about Jim Robinson's life at the Friendfield Plantation, beyond that he worked in the riverfront rice fields after the Civil War. Local historians don't know how or when he came to Friendfield, but census records indicate both his parents were born in South Carolina. The coastal Carolina city often is referred to as the African-American Ellis Island because of the many slave ships that docked along its shores. A map from the early 1870s, when Robinson was living on the plantation, shows three parallel rows of slave cabins, each with 10 to 13 buildings along Slave Street. By 1911, only 14 were standing. Five single cabins remain today. With their massive fireplaces and wood-plank walls, each tells a story about slave life on the plantation. The small shacks, only 19 feet deep, housed several families at once, said Ed Carter, who oversees the property. Large stone fireplaces were used for cooking and heating. Attic space beneath the gable roof offered a place for extra people to sleep. The plantation's former owner, Francis Withers, built a "meeting house" for slaves on the estate before 1841, and the South Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church assigned a preacher there. A fire destroyed the church in 1940. By the time Withers died in 1847, the family had expanded Friendfield to include six plantations and more than 500 slaves. At the height of the rice trade, Friendfield was one of the most lucrative plantations in the area, Carter said. In his will, Withers, educated at Harvard University, provided for the care of his slaves, including the upkeep of the church and a salary for the preacher. He also requested his slaves be treated with "great kindness and be fed and clothed." He left $10,000 to purchase more slaves to work the plantation and provided financial incentives for his surviving relatives to retain his "Friendfield gang of slaves" as a group and not break up families. Respect for learning The plantation's prosperity faded after the Civil War, and the family began selling off the property in 1879, according to land records. Jim Robinson, like many former slaves, continued to live on the farm. It's unclear when he died, but local historians think he is buried in an unmarked grave in a slave cemetery that overlooks the old rice fields on the edges of Whites Creek. Among Jim Robinson's surviving children was Fraser Robinson, Michelle Obama's great-grandfather. Born in 1884, he went to work as a houseboy for a local family before his 16th birthday. Census records show he was illiterate as a teen but had learned to read and write by the time he had children. As an adult, he worked as a lumber-mill laborer, shoe repairman and newspaper salesman. He registered for the draft during World War I but was turned down because he had lost his left arm, military records show. Fraser Robinson married a local woman named Rose Ella Cohen and had at least six children. Described by a family friend as an intelligent man who wanted his children to be well-read, he always brought home his extra copies of the "Palmetto Leader and Grit," a black newspaper that was popular in rural communities across the country. "He used to make his children read those newspapers," said Margretta Dunmore Knox, who still lives in Georgetown and attended the same church as the Robinsons. "Maybe that's how they became so smart." His eldest son, Fraser Jr., was born in 1912 and graduated from high school. Census records from 1930 show that 18-year-old Fraser Jr. was living at home and working at a sawmill after earning his diploma. At the time, Georgetown, a coastal town about an hour's drive north of Charleston and the state's third-oldest city, was split along racial lines. Basic human rights that blacks had known after the Reconstruction era disappeared as the Deep South sank into the Depression and segregationist ways. ]The power of "Enough" As Georgetown's economy crumbled, Fraser Jr. headed north to Chicago in search of employment. There, he met and married LaVaughn Johnson. Their son Fraser Robinson III â Michelle Obama's father â was born in 1935. Although they never attended college, Fraser III and his wife, Marian, made education a top priority for their two children. Both would attend Princeton and earn postgraduate degrees from prestigious universities. Fraser and LaVaughn Robinson lived on the South Side of Chicago for part of Michelle's childhood, before retiring and moving south. After returning to Georgetown, the couple joined the AME Bethel Church, founded by freed slaves in 1865 and the oldest black church in the city. The couple sang in the choir and built a large circle of friends, Knox said. Michelle Obama returned to the same church in January while campaigning for her husband in the South Carolina presidential primary. Addressing a packed audience that included at least 30 descendants of Jim Robinson, Obama talked about the need for change in the confident voice of a distant daughter of slavery. "Things get better when regular folks take action to make change happen from the bottom up," she said. "Every major historical moment in our time, it has been made by folks who said, 'Enough,' and they banded together to move this country forward â and now is one of those times."
I am very sorry for her loss, but that does not mean she and her husband now has the right to enslave 300 million americans
1860 USA population 29 million 20 million white north 5 million white south, 4 million blacks 4 out of 5 white people pre civil war lived in a state where slavery was NOT legal, and in the south, only the rich owned slaves 650,000 white people died to end slavery to say that white people arent responsible for 'what their ancestors did' still overstates 'white guilt', because it's very unlikely that the average white person has an ancestor that had anything to do with slavery even if their ancestors DID come here prior to 1865 today's white have been subjected to decades of hate from blacks over slavery, and have taxed the hell out of them In reality, the average white today is the slave of the black, and had NEVER enslaved the black
"650,000 people died to end slavery" That is the official explanation for the Civil War. Historians admit that was "one" of the issues, since Union commander U. S. Grant also owned slaves, etc,
Grant freed his slaves a couple of years before the Civil War and changed political parties during the War, as he realized the importance that black soldiers played in the Union army. Indeed, on civil rights for blacks, he was well ahead of his time. And regarding slavery, it was the probable principal cause of the Civil War, but there were many, many other causes. Put it this way: no slavery, no Civil War.
Who gives a fuck? So sick of blacks today constantly bringing up slavery as if they suffered through it. It's been well over 140 years since slavery ended. Move the fuck on and stop blaming whitey for everything. Obama = Failure
bullshit. the vast majority of confederate soldiers did not even own slaves and were in poverty. total bullshit. Look up Robert E. Lee and you will find he did the same as Grant granting manumission in 1862. Also, there were black soldiers in the confederate army, though not as numerous as the north. Southern General Patrick Cleburne offered freeing slaves so they could fight for the Confederacy, but was turned down. like the poster above, get over it and move on, because this argument is wearing thin from the hypocrisy.
Liberia was a great idea really.. I lived through the Watts riots, the Rodney King riots.. yes.. I like that Liberia concept.. nothing personal black people, not really racism here, just really, really, really, really fed up with the "righteous anger of blacks".. you can take all your anger and shove it sideways so far it makes you look white for all I care... I worked in the private sector all my life while you sucked up public monies that i paid in taxes.. I owe you nothing at all in terms of money, get over it.. I am always, always, wondering what the US would look like if the SHTF like in Argentina a few years ago... how many blacks would still be alive after a few years... they don't work in the private sector because of Reverend Jackemup and his lawsuit work and the rest of the race industry lawyers.. so some work in the public sector and some are on welfare.. the ones on welfare subsidize their meager checks with crime and don't build up any reserve to get through anything... we are buying ammo for one straight year nearly at a record breaking clip.. it could be like putting a match to a puddle in a refinery..
liberia was an idea of practical brilliance. In the movie "Birth of a Nation", it is suggested that had Lincoln lived, he would have gone through with it Think how different Chicago, Detroit, DC and New Orleans would look today if that had been carried out
u.s.a. will look like mexico in another 50 years, the white populations is getting smaller every year.