Donald Trump is the only president alive, past or present, whose family can’t be linked to slave ownership, according to a new report.
Reuters says Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are all descendants of a slave owner.
That study also found Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, as well as at least 100 lawmakers, descended from ancestors who enslaved Black people. Sitting members of Congress who can link their heritage to slavers include at least 28% of Republicans and 8% of Democrats, Reuters claims.
Obama, the only Black president elected in the U.S., can reportedly trace his family’s slave-owning roots to one man on his white mother’s side of the family, who subjugated two humans.
The Trumps, meanwhile, arrived in the U.S. after slavery was abolished.
Friedrich Trump — a sickly child unsuited for hard labor and wanting to avoid serving in Germany’s military, according to the History Channel — crossed the Atlantic to launch his family legacy in 1885. The 13th Amendment called for an end to slavery 20 years earlier.
Two Republicans competing with Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, also come from families with slave-owning pasts, Reuters reports.
Harvard University professor and PBS “Finding Your Roots” host Henry Louis Gates Jr. said these findings tie the past to the present.
“It’s just to say: Look at how closely linked we are to the institution of slavery, and how it informed the lives of the ancestors of people who represent us in the United States Congress today,” he told Reuters.
But Gates also stated that researchers’ connections shouldn’t be seen as “another chapter in the blame game,” adding, “We do not inherit guilt for our ancestors’ actions.”
