A carved stone block at the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center serves as a reminder that enslaved blacks helped build the home of the nation's Congress. The bronze plaque says that the commemorative stone, which was originally part of the exterior of the building, "is a reminder of their important role in the construction of the Capitol."
Many American lawmakers need look no further than their own families to discover a personal connection to slavery in America, a brutal system of repression that resulted in the deadliest conflict in the country's history.
Research conducted by the Reuters agency showed that a fifth of congressmen, most presidents, some Supreme Court justices and governors are direct descendants of slave owners.
Among the 536 members of the last session of Congress, Reuters found that at least 100 are descendants of slave owners. Among them are some of America's most influential politicians: Republican Senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton and James Lankford, and Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Daworth, Jeannie Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.
In addition, President Joe Biden and every living former US president except Donald Trump are direct descendants of slave owners: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and, through his white mother, Barack Obama. Trump's ancestors came to America after slavery was abolished.
One of the ancestors of current President Joe Biden held a 14-year-old boy as a slave in 1850, according to documents obtained by Reuters.
Two of the current nine Supreme Court justices - Amy Coney Bennett and Neil Gorsuch - are also direct descendants of slave owners.
President Joe Biden and every living former US president except Donald Trump are direct descendants of slave owners: Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and, through his white mother, Barack Obama. Trump's ancestors came to America after slavery was abolished
In 2022, 11 of the 50 US states had governors who are descendants of slave owners, Reuters found. Two are seeking the Republican nomination for president: Asa Hutchinson, former governor of Arkansas, and Doug Burgum of North Dakota.
South Carolina, where the Civil War began, best illustrates the family ties between legislators and the nation's history of slavery. Every member of the state delegation is a descendant of slave owners. The state's two African-American members of Congress -- Sen. and Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott and Rep. James Clyburn, a powerful Democrat -- have ancestors who were slaves.
Reuters found that at least eight percent of Democrats in the last session of Congress and 28 percent of Republicans had slave-owning ancestors. The preponderance of Republicans in this regard reflects the party's strength in the South, where slavery was concentrated. Although whites enslaved blacks throughout the northern states of America, prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, slavery was almost entirely a southern enterprise.
The Reuters investigation showed how intimately America remains tied to the institution of slavery, including through "the people who make the laws by which the country is governed," said Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor who focuses on African and African-American studies and hosts the popular television show "Find Your Roots" on PBS.
Gates said that establishing family ties to slavers is not "another chapter in the blame game." We do not inherit guilt for the actions of our ancestors. The goal of this is to see how closely we are connected to the institution of slavery and how it determined the lives of the ancestors of the people who represent us in Congress today," said Gates. "This is an opportunity for every individual to learn. It is also an opportunity for their voters to learn something... as well as the entire American people".
A Reuters survey showed that, in addition to politicians, "millions of Americans are also descendants of slave owners," said Tony Burroughs, a genealogist specializing in helping blacks in America trace their ancestors.
What is unclear is the ratio of the number of leaders descended from slave owners to that of all Americans. There is no consensus among experts on the exact number of Americans who are direct descendants of slave owners.
Original sin
Family ties to slave owners have previously been documented for several leaders, including Biden, Obama and McConnell. Scholars and journalists have also extensively explored slavery and its legacy, including how the North profited from the institution, and the role of slavery in the decisions of past political leaders during America's formation and after emancipation.
However, Reuters research begs the question. It focuses on the most powerful officials in the US today, many of whom hold key positions related to race issues. For the first time, the extent of their ancestors' connection to what is often called America's "original sin" has been revealed in detail. Reuters also investigates what it meant for them to learn - personal, and in some cases quite graphic - facts about the role of their ancestors in slavery.
Few were willing to discuss the subject: only a quarter of those whose ancestors were identified as slave owners wanted to comment for the British agency. Among the quietest were those politicians who had previously spoken publicly, and fiercely, about the legacy of slavery and the need for racial healing. The hesitation underscores how sensitive a political issue slavery remains, creating an uneasiness that genealogist Burroughs says is greatly heightened by many with relatives connected to the brutal institution.
"You probably have a lot of people struggling" to process information about their families, Burroughs said. He pointed out that the detailed accounts provided by Reuters of the leaders - the names, places and circumstances linking their families to slavery - made the information particularly powerful. "But it's hard for them to deny when they have concrete facts in front of them."
In order to trace the family lines of the political elite, Reuters journalists collected tens of thousands of pieces of information contained in thousands of pages of documents. They analyzed US census records, including antebellum records of enslaved people known as “slave schedules,” as well as tax documents, property records, family Bibles, newspaper articles, and birth and death certificates. The records—in some cases, family wills depicting enslaved human beings bequeathed along with feathers and domestic animals—provide a link between today's decision makers and slavery.
Among the officials whose ancestors were connected with slavery is Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina. Reuters investigators found that after the death of his direct ancestor, Joseph Maddox, a receipt was prepared for the sale of his property. Dated February 1, 1845, it shows the purchase of eight persons held in slavery by Maddox. Among them were five children: Sela, Rubin, James, Sal and Green. “Black Sam” sold for $155,22. Their names are listed along with items like a wooden horse (which sold for $10,50) and a folding table ($9,87). "Senator Graham called slavery 'the original sin of this country,'" his aide said in a brief response to a detailed report on the Reuters revelations about Maddox. Graham did not respond to requests for comment. In his last public appearance, he spoke about the need to focus on building "a more perfect alliance instead of going back to the past".
Racism is again a hot topic in the USA
The new insights into the political elite's ancestral connection to slavery come at a time of renewed and intense debate about the meaning of the institution's legacy and what, if anything, lawmakers should do about it. Such topics include what to teach about slavery and racism in American classrooms and how to address persistent black household income inequality, including monetary reparations.
Protests over police treatment of black people rocked the United States after a white Minnesota police officer killed George Floyd, a black man, in May 2020. Activists pushed for the removal of Confederate monuments, and tensions flared along party lines. In September 2020, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning federal funding for training that portrays the United States as "fundamentally racist or sexist." Biden revoked the order in January 2021.
One of the contentious issues is that of financial reparations for Americans whose ancestors were slaves. In May 2022, a consortium of activist groups called on President Biden to appoint a federal commission by executive order "to study and develop proposals for reparations for African Americans." A House resolution filed in May of this year calls for trillions of dollars in damages. Similar bills, most notably House Resolution 40 and its Senate equivalent, have been stalled in Congress for years.
On Thursday, the majority-conservative US Supreme Court ruled to strike down affirmative action, which was based on affirmative action in admissions to US colleges and aimed to increase the number of students of black or Hispanic origin and other minority groups. Biden said that he strongly opposes the decision and said "we cannot allow this decision to be the last word".
Research by Reuters and Ipsos suggests that politicians' ties to slavery can sway voters. In a national survey, nearly a quarter of respondents - 23 percent - said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate if they knew his or her ancestors were slave owners. That figure is 31 percent among respondents who identify themselves as Democrats, and 35 percent among respondents who are black.
One member of Congress who has a slave-owning ancestor, former Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, questions what the country has to gain by revisiting the issue.
"Let's hope that everyone in America is smart enough to know that slavery is abominable," said Brooks, who lost the US Senate last year. "So, the question arises, if everyone knows it's disgusting, what else can we learn from it?".
Knowing the details is key to reconciliation
Experts, however, argue that uncovering the dark historical details of slavery is essential to understanding the nation's past and bridging racial divides.
"There is a certain kind of moral value to documenting this crime and acknowledging what happened, and going into detail about the nature of it, and that includes saying who was involved," said Sean Kelly, an American professor at the University of Essex who specializes in overseas slave trade.
Knowing the details is critical to some kind of racial reconciliation in the United States, Kelly said.
In a survey of America's political elite, Reuters found the names - mostly always just the first name - of 712 people who were slaves to politicians' ancestors. Further research of these persons is extremely difficult. Genealogists claim that white people researching their ancestors can offer help to black people in the US by finding information that allows them to trace their ancestors. Black genealogy is faced with a specific obstacle. Prior to 1870, census enumerators almost never recorded the names of slaves in the US, only years and a half. However, white families may have other documents—such as wills, plantation accounts, and family Bibles that list the names of slaves—or know where those documents are located.
For most of the ancestors identified by Reuters, slavery was not practiced on the vast plantations romanticized in works such as Gone with the Wind. Few had an ancestor whose holdings were large enough to place them among the so-called plantation elite of the South.
Yet the ancestors of congressional officials were among the wealthiest in their communities and in all of pre-Civil War America. Almost all of the slave ancestors traced by Reuters were among the richest 20 percent of Americans in 1960, census data showed.
Three-quarters were among the richest 10 percent, a Reuters analysis found.
Emancipation dealt a severe blow to fortunes at the end of the Civil War. However, many slave-owning families recovered.
A 2021 study found that the biggest slave owners suffered one of the biggest wealth shocks recorded in history. But their grandchildren almost completely regained their economic status by 1940—with the help, the authors concluded, of elite kinship networks and social class connections.
Bonus video:
