In these trying times, it’s important to find the bright side of life, now and then. To have a good belly laugh. To read something that just brightens your whole day.
Such as, oh, I don’t know, finding out that Angela Davis is a descendant of not only the Mayflower but a Revolutionary War soldier and a slave owner. At the rate she’s going, she’ll end up having more white ancestors than Lidia Thorpe.
In case you don’t recall, Davis is a radical, black power activist involved with the left-wing, anti-American violence of the 60s and 70s. It’s like finding out that Rawiri Waititi’s old man was a hood-wearing Klansman. Or that Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s heritage is full of white folks… oh, wait…
Racial activist and former fugitive Angela Davis was shocked to learn she is a Mayflower descendent on Tuesday’s episode of “Finding Your Roots” on PBS.
Davis is notorious for working with the Communist Party USA and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 70s. Her involvement in the armed takeover of a California courtroom resulted in four deaths and her placement on the FBI’s Most Wanted List.
In a neat mirror of the “white supremacist finds he has black great-great-grandparent” trope, Davis made the mistake of looking too deeply into her family history. No doubt hoping to turn up a Kunta Kinte, she turned up a gallery of Pilgrim Fathers and whip-crackin’ massas.
Near the end of the episode, after discussing multiple members of her family, the former Black Panther learned she descended from William Brewster, one of the 101 people who came to the colonies in 1620 aboard the Mayflower.
New York Post
Legend even has it that her 10th-great grandmother, Mary Wentworth Brewster, one of only four adult women to survive the winter of 1621, helped cook the first Thanksgiving dinner.
And the whities just keep falling out of the closet: Davis’ paternal grandfather was one Murphy Jones, the white next-door neighbour of her grandmother. Davis’ grandmother had four children with Jones.
It gets even funnier, though. Her maternal grandfather was a white Alabama lawyer John Austin Darden. His ancestors included Davis’ fourth great-grandfather, one Stephen Darden.
Stephen Darden, born in 1750 in colonial Virginia, fought in the Revolutionary War. After the war, he moved to Georgia, where he purchased a farm and had six slaves.
Western Standard
Can I get a whomp-whomp?
Twitter wags were quick to pounce. After all, Davis has been heavily involved in demands for reparations for slavery.
“Angela Davis is a colonizer. Angela Davis owes me reparations,” one Twitter user said […]
“Angela Davis, an openly Marxist professor at the U of CA, just found out that some of her ancestors are the ‘white racist colonizers’ that she’s been teaching against her whole life! Not only that – she’s a descendant from a slave owner. Looks like she owes reparations,” tweeted another user.
The Post-Millennial
Maybe there really is a God — and he has a wicked sense of humour.
