Report reveals many current U.S. leaders have slaveholding ancestors

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• Amna Nawaz:

  Although America declared its independence on this day in 1776, it would take nearly 90 years for Black people enslaved in this country to obtain their freedom.

  A new reporting project from Reuters found that some of the most powerful people in the country today are direct descendants of powerful slave-owning early Americans.

  I recently spoke with Tom Lasseter, an editor who worked on the Reuters project. While he was seeking responses from Republicans and Democrats alike about his team's findings, he too was reckoning with new details about his own family's ties to slavery.

  Tom Lasseter, welcome to the "NewsHour." Thanks for being here.

• Tom Lasseter, Editor, Reuters:

  Thanks for having me.

• Amna Nawaz:

  So you spent years and years overseas as a foreign correspondent. When you came back to the U.S. in 2020, you decided you wanted to focus on the legacy of slavery in America.

  Why? What drew you to that?

• Tom Lasseter:

  Well, we moved to Washington shortly after the killing of George Floyd.

  And sitting there in a corporate apartment in D.C., watching the coverage of the protests which followed, watching also sort of the protest and debate about the removal of Confederate statues, Confederate monuments, as sort of an outsider to my own country sort of watching these things, it just — it occurred to me America was having a moment of reckoning, and that that part of that, at least, was the question of whether we have sort of fully explored the legacy of slavery in America.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You sought to look into the family histories of our political and institutional leaders. There's a number of details in your full report, but some of the findings, I want to hit the highlights here, eye-opening.

  Among the 536 members of the last sitting Congress, 100 had ancestors who enslaved people. That includes 28 senators. You're talking about both Republicans and Democrats, President Joe Biden, every living former U.S. president, except for former President Trump, whose ancestors came to the U.S. after slavery was abolished.

  Did the results surprise you?

• Tom Lasseter:

  Well, I would say, first of all, that was very much an at-least number.

  Those were the cases in which we could reach a high degree of confidence that the family tree that we built for that sort of American political notable was from the very first rung being the member of Congress or a member of Supreme Court goes back to the ancestor that we identified as having been an enslaver, and then that that ancestor had actually enslaved someone.

  So we — there were a great many other cases where we thought we had probably linked it, but just couldn't reach that — sort of that degree of confidence.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You reached out to a number of members of Congress and these other leaders as well for responses. Did everyone respond?

• Tom Lasseter:

  The majority of them did not. The majority of them did not respond with either a statement or an interview.

  But we did. We reached out to each of the 118 people that we have — we have named in this report.

• Amna Nawaz:

  I wanted to ask you about one response in particular. This was from former Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama.

  He said — quote — "Hopefully, everybody in America is smart enough to know that slavery is abhorrent. So the question then becomes, if everybody already knows it's abhorrent, what more can you teach from that?"

  What did you make of that response? And was that similar to other responses you have got?

• Tom Lasseter:

  Well, I spoke with former Representative Brooks on the phone a couple times.

  And his response was sort of a — I would say sort of a type of. You — certainly, some people responded that, of course, the institution of slavery is a sort of a stain upon American history, it was — it was morally wrong. Everyone agrees about that. But it does not have anything to do with the present day. It does not have anything to do with me, the person speaking. And so why — why look at it? Why? Why sort of ask these questions about it?

• Amna Nawaz:

  You got a different response from the likes of someone like Senator Tammy Duckworth, for example. How did she respond?

• Tom Lasseter:

  Senator Duckworth, I met with in her Senate offices.

  She said: Part of my ancestry — this is from her father's side, which is from Virginia — fought in the American Revolution. And if I'm going to talk about that publicly, if I'm going to claim that part of my heritage and be proud of that heritage, then I also have to look squarely at the fact that some of my ancestors enslaved people.

  In her case, it was two separate ancestors, which she had not known before.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tom, you uncovered your own family history as part of your reporting and discovered that your ancestors had also enslaved Black people.

  What was that like to make that discovery?

• Tom Lasseter:

  It started with a memory as a teenager walking across a farm my family used to own in Forsyth County, Georgia, and walking past a water well, and my grandfather just sort of gesturing at it in an offhand way and saying: "The slaves built that."

  And I, sort of in a way that I think is typical for some white families in the South, sort of knew, but didn't know, had this memory, this piece of information, chose to do nothing with it for my adult life.

  So I say that I did not realize I had ancestors who enslaved people. But, also, I — it was something that I could have explored and had sort of found out in any of those intervening years.

  But, yes, I have at least five ancestors who enslaved people in three different counties in Georgia.

• Amna Nawaz:

  As part of your work too, you met with a woman whose ancestors were enslaved by yours. What was that meeting like? What did you say to her? What did she say back?

• Tom Lasseter:

  Well, we met a couple times.

  I wanted to sort of have something sort of to show, I guess. And I had a packet of genealogical information tracing out her family tree, and then tracing out where her family tree intersected with my family. And it named two of those enslaved people.

  And I had been following those people forward. And they were — they were her ancestors.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You know, when you began this, you mentioned your editors raised the question, by looking into our leaders' family histories, what can you learn about how they lead today? What does their past, in other words mean, for America's future?

  Do you feel like you could answer that question now?

• Tom Lasseter:

  Well, I think America right now, both in terms of legislation, debate, and just public sort of conversation, is grappling with a number of issues that in one way or the other touch on the legacy of slavery in America.

  I mean, most directly, there's reparations. There's also, of course, a fair amount of debate about how this history should be taught. We want to inform that debate with an establishment of a basic set of facts. And from the beginning of this — of this project, to me, the fact that I have grappled with both personally and more broadly is, slavery didn't just happen.

  There were people who enslaved other people. And, to me, the question was, well, who? Who enslaved them? What did it mean for those families? What did it mean for the enslaved? And what did it mean for the descendants of the enslaved? And just to start out with, again, just an establishment of a basic set of facts.

• Amna Nawaz:

  It's a stunning piece of work. It's available to read online. And the journalist is Tom Lasseter of Reuters.

  Tom, thank you for being here and speaking with us about your work.

• Tom Lasseter:

  Thank you for having me.