Beto O’Rourke: My wife and I have slave-owners as ancestors – AOL
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke acknowledged Sunday that his ancestors, as well as his wife Amy’s, had owned slaves. O’Rourke wrote in a post on Medium that his paternal great-great-great grandfather enslaved two women in the 1850s. His maternal great-great-great grandfather, he added, “most likely” also owned slaves.
“I benefit from a system that my ancestors built to favor themselves at the expense of others,” O’Rourke wrote in the post. “That only increases the urgency I feel to help change this country so that it works for those who have been locked-out of — or locked-up in — this system.”
O’Rourke’s disclosure was made shortly before the publication of a report in The Guardian that detailed the former Texas congressman’s slave-owning ancestry.
Genealogy website Ancestry.com has “abundant documentation” of O’Rourke’s and his wife’s ancestors’ slave-owning and their support for the Confederacy, The Guardian reported, noting that O’Rourke is listed as a member of the site.
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**ADVANCE FOR MONDAY, OCT 31** El Paso City Representatives Steve Ortega, left and Beto O’Rourke pose with a backdrop of Downtown El Paso, Texas, Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005. The two and three other colleagues, all political newcomers under 35, were elected this year to the El Paso city council. The group of young up-and-comers say they took on their public roles to make El Paso the kind of city it should be, the kind it has long struggled to become. (AP Photo/El Paso Times, Victor Calzada)
US Rep. Beto O’Rourke (R), D-TX, speaks during a meeting with One Campaign volunteers including Jeseus Navarrete (L) on February 26, 2013 in O’Rouke’s office in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGANWith the United States days away from billions of dollars in automatic spending cuts, anti-poverty campaigners fear that reductions in foreign aid could potentially lead to thousands of deaths. The world’s largest economy faces $85 billion in cuts virtually across the board starting on March 1, 2013 unless the White House and Congress reach a last-minute deal ahead of the self-imposed deadline known as the sequester. While the showdown has caused concern in numerous circles, activists are pushing hard to avoid a 5.3 percent cut in US development assistance which they fear could set back programs to feed the poor and prevent disease. ‘The sequester is an equal cut across the board, but equal cuts don’t have equal impact,’ said Tom Hart, US executive director of the One campaign, the anti-poverty group co-founded by U2 frontman Bono. AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
US Rep. Beto O’Rourke , D-TX, meets with One campaign volunteers on February 26, 2013 in O’Rouke’s office in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. With the United States days away from billions of dollars in automatic spending cuts, anti-poverty campaigners fear that reductions in foreign aid could potentially lead to thousands of deaths. The world’s largest economy faces $85 billion in cuts virtually across the board starting on March 1, 2013 unless the White House and Congress reach a last-minute deal ahead of the self-imposed deadline known as the sequester. While the showdown has caused concern in numerous circles, activists are pushing hard to avoid a 5.3 percent cut in US development assistance which they fear could set back programs to feed the poor and prevent disease. ‘The sequester is an equal cut across the board, but equal cuts don’t have equal impact,’ said Tom Hart, US executive director of the One campaign, the anti-poverty group co-founded by U2 frontman Bono. AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
U.S. citizen Edgar Falcon, second from right, and Maricruz Valtierra of Mexico, second from left, laugh while El Paso congressman Beto O’Rourke, right, and Judge Bill Moody, left, congratulate them after the couple was married at U.S.-Mexico border, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2013 in El Paso, Texas. Like many other couples made up of a US citizen and a foreigner, Falcon and Valtierra, who has been declared inadmissible after an immigration law violation, hope immigration reform will help them live together in the U.S. (AP Photo/Juan Carlos Llorca)
Congressman Beto O’Rourke, center, speaks at a new conference accompanied by Lillian D’Amico, left, mother of a deceased veteran, and Melinda Russel, a former Army chaplain, in El Paso, Texas, Wednesday, June. 4, 2014. A survey of hundreds of West Texas veterans conducted by O’Rourke’s office has found that on average they wait more than two months to see a Veterans Affairs mental health professional and even longer to see a physician. (AP Photo/Juan Carlos Llorca)
Democratic candidate for the US Senate Beto ORourke addresses his last public event in Austin before election night at the Pan American Neighborhood Park on November 4, 2018 in Austin, Texas. – One of the most expensive and closely watched Senate races is in Texas, where incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz is facing Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke, 46, whose given names are Robert Francis but who goes by Beto, is mounting a suprisingly strong challenge to the 47-year-old Cruz in the reliably Republican ‘Lone Star State.’ O’Rourke, a three-term congressman and former member of a punk band, is drawing enthusiastic support from many urban dwellers in Texas while Cruz does better in conservative rural areas.
Plucking the Senate seat from Cruz, who battled Donald Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, would be a major victory for the Democratic Party. (Photo by SUZANNE CORDEIRO / AFP) (Photo credit should read SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP/Getty Images)
U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, left, and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, right, take part in a debate for the Texas U.S. Senate, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018, in San Antonio. (Tom Reel/San Antonio Express-News via AP, Pool)
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Andrew Jasper, O’Rourke’s paternal great-great-great grandfather, enslaved two women named Eliza and Rose, both of whom were auctioned off in a “crying sale” after Jasper died, the report said.
Amy O’Rourke’s family had also owned several slaves, including ”‘one negro man called Peter,’ ‘a boy called Darsy,’ ‘a girl called Sally,’ a ‘negro man called Ned’ and ‘one other called Moses,’” the report added, citing a 1798 probate record.
O’Rourke told the outlet that he and his wife had known “nothing” about their families’ slave-owning past, and had been deeply troubled by the revelation.
“Amy and I sat down and talked through this,” O’Rourke said. “How Andrew was able, through his descendants, to pass on the benefits of owning other human beings. And ultimately I and my children are beneficiaries of that.”
O’Rourke, who has previously expressed support for reparations for descendants of slaves, reiterated this position on Sunday night.
“I will continue to support reparations, beginning with an important national conversation on slavery and racial injustice,” he wrote on Medium.
O’Rourke said it’s critical that Americans “know our own story as it relates to the national story.”
“It is only then, I believe, that we can take the necessary steps to repair the damage done and stop visiting this injustice on the generations that follow ours,” he said.
Last week, an NBC News report revealed that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s two great-great-great grandfathers had enslaved at least 14 people in Alabama in the 1800s.
“You know, I find myself once again in the same position” as Obama, McConnell said at a press conference when asked about the NBC report.
“We both oppose reparations, and we both are the descendants of slaveholders,” he said.
McConnell failed to clarify that while Obama is the descendant of slave owners, the former president also counts the first African slave in the American colonies as an ancestor, according to Ancestry.com; and while the Republican senator from Kentucky has dismissed reparations because, he said, “no one currently alive was responsible” for slavery, Obama has argued that it’s “hard to find a model” for reparations which could be effectively administered and would have political support.
