With the exception of Donald Trump, all current and former living US presidents had at least one ancestor who was a slave owner, according to a Reuters analysis. Reuters published the genealogies of “America’s political elite” data on Tuesday, discovering that President Joe Biden and all of his living predecessors are descended from enslavers. Even Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president, is a slaveowner’s descendant on his white mother’s side of the family.
According to Reuters, living US presidents’ slave-holding ancestors include:
George Bush — Six generations away, one of the director’s ancestors owned 25 slaves.
Bill Clinton – Five generations away, one director ancestor had one slave.
Jimmy Carter – Four generations distant, one of the director’s ancestors owned 54 slaves.
Barack Obama – Six generations away, one of the director’s ancestors owned two slaves.
Joe Biden – Five generations away, one direct ancestor held one slave.
There are also judges and senators on the list
In addition, two Supreme Court justices, 11 governors, and 100 members of Congress were determined to be direct descendants of slaveholders. There are at least 28% of Republicans and 8% of Democrats in Congress who can trace their ancestors back to slavers. (Tramadol) Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Lindsey Graham, as well as Democrats such as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Duckworth, are among them.
Trump is the lone exception
While all American presidents had significant genealogical roots in the country, Trump’s relatives arrived only after slavery was abolished in 1865, according to the Reuters study. It’s worth noting that none of Trump’s grandparents were born in the United States. His paternal grandparents were born in Kallstadt, Germany, and immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. According to Business Insider, his mother, Mary, was born in Scotland.
Reuters stated that it compiled tens of thousands of pieces of information included in hundreds of pages of papers to track the political elite’s genealogies. They said that they only considered evidence of slaveholding that occurred after the formation of the United States Journalists who researched direct lineal descendants of the present-day elite rather than focusing on family trees that included distant cousins.