Speaking of
my grandmother, Lillie, she was a member of the four “L sisters.” (Lena,
Lizzie, Lucille and Lillie). They were all dark-complexioned; (but the first
two of the four, even more so).
There was an
oral tradition passed down through generations of the Chaney family that they
shared a Native American bloodline; almost certainly originating with the Creek
Nation of Northwest Georgia. Speaking of the Creek Nation, I can report that I
once visited the site of a Creek Indian Mound in the area to which I alluded,
and my visit “conjured up” something in me. It literally felt like “old home
week.”
Fast forward
a couple of decades, and my mother, Erma was experiencing declining health, was
bedridden, and resided in a nursing home. Mama had always wanted to take a DNA
test, but had never done so. But since it seemed obvious to me that she would,
in all likelihood, go on to her reward sometime during the year 2016, I ordered
the kit for her.
Strangely
enough, sometime during the couple of weeks we waited to receive the DNA kit,
mama divulged something she had never told me in the sixty plus years I had
been her son.
“You know,
when I was growing up people used to ask me if I was part black.”
In
retrospect, I realized that she was preparing me for a rather surprising
revelation.
Pt. 2
Once the DNA
test arrived, I lost no time in taking it to the nursing home, and
administering it to my mother. Of course, the main ingredient to a successful
analysis of one’s DNA is saliva. As a result, I handed my mom the vial, and
asked her to fill it with spit; which she proceeded to do…in slow motion. It seemed
it was all she could do to summon up enough moisture to fill a thimble. And the
more I willed her to “get ‘er done,” the more time elapsed, and the less likely
it seemed that she would ever make it happen. I could just see mama’s $200 cost
of the DNA test going down the proverbial drain.
Of course, I
“egged her on,” and urged her to conjure up enough of the bubbly stuff to fill
the receptacle. And, ultimately, she completed the task at hand, I released the
stabilizing fluid, capped the tube, and slipped it into the shipping box. Later
that day, I dropped the sample in the mail slot at the Post Office. And we
began to wait the requisite six weeks.
However, after
less than four weeks elapsed my mother succumbed to a multitude of diagnoses; and
before having learned the results of her DNA test.
A couple
weeks later, I received an email from “23 & Me,” titled,
“DNA Results
– Erma McDonald.”
And the
results?
I discovered
that my mother was 98% European, but she was 1.8% (drum roll)… Sub-Saharan
(black) African with 1.7% of that fraction originating in West Africa. (While
my subsequent DNA test did not reflect any evidence of Sub-Saharan African
lineage, of course, I am the product of both my father and my mother, and
percentages below “1” will often reflect a negative reading).
Pt. 3
I regret
that my mother failed to live long enough to see the results of her genetic
testing. However, now I understood why, just weeks before her passing, she’d
made the off-hand remark that people had sometimes asked her whether any of her
ancestors had originated in Africa. I think she was ‘prepping’ me for the
possibility her DNA results would indicate that some of her forebears had been
born on what as been characterized as “the Dark Continent.”
After I gave
my mother’s DNA results “time to sink in,” I naturally wondered why my
grandmother and great aunts were as dark as they were given their
(corresponding) 3.6% African-American bloodline. However, it is widely
understood that DNA results are not “cut in stone,” and if and when the same
individual submits to testing from two or more different companies, the outcome
may vary. (My natural conclusion is that my grandmother’s, mother’s, and
subsequently, my Sub-Saharan African percentages are actually greater than the
DNA test indicates).
And what of
the widely held oral tradition that my mother’s family possessed a strain of
Native American heritage? It is well understood that over the past couple
hundred years some families have created oral myths to account for their skin
tone, and rather than admit the presence of an African bloodline, they have,
rather, substituted a non-existent Native American heritage.
Interestingly
enough, while the results of my own DNA test mirrored my mother’s, at least in
terms of the absence of Native American DNA, two of my father’s ancestors, a
mother and daughter, were referred to as “mean old Indian squaws;” leading me
to believe there is most likely a “there there,” in this regard to this
possibility.
(I have read
that the small normative samples of Native American DNA that has been
contributed to various test company’s data bases may account for many false
negative results among families who have documentation to the contrary).
Pt. 4
In spite of my
initial surprise regarding the results of my mother’s DNA test, the more I
considered the obvious, the more I acclimated to the evidence. I possessed, at
a minimum, an almost 1% African-American genetic heritage.
I have never
liked mathematics, especially so-called “advanced math.” However, I manage
quite well with the basic variety. And the basic variety was all I needed to do
the necessary computations.
Readers, do
you recall I began my story with a reference to my grandmother? (Yeah, I
thought so). But as I implied, the grandmother to whom I referred at the
beginning is not the one who went by the name of, “Lillie Chaney Ring,” (Au
contraire).
For you see,
if you do the math, which I have done, (and you accept the minimal results
indicated by my mother’s DNA test) my 5x great grandmother was (drum roll) 100%
black, and based on the approximate time element of the mid-1700’s, she was
born in West Africa.
It seems
apparent to me that my African grandmother was, as I have inferred, born in
Africa, taken by force by white slave traders, loaded unto a masted sailing
ship, shackled below the main deck, made to subsist on bread and water, laid in
her own waste, arrived in a port like Charleston or Savannah, stood
bare-breasted on an auction block, was awarded to the highest bidder, was housed
in a rough-board cabin on some Southern plantation, worked from dawn to well
after the sinking of the sun in cotton, tobacco and bean fields, and when she
paused a moment longer than he thought necessary, or begged for water endured
the sting of her overseer’s leather whip.
Pt. 5
And readers,
if you have been keeping up with this convoluted saga, you have almost
certainly noticed that I have referred to an ancient grandmother; (rather than
an ancient grandfather). I think there is a valid rationale for this hypothesis,
and for the corresponding dilution of my African-American bloodline, in favor
of my Caucasian bloodline.
You see, for
my hypothesis to be true, (and I think it almost certainly must be) given the
increasingly paler complexion in subsequent generations of Chaney descendants, (and
the dilution of the African bloodline) my ancient grandmother was African, and
my ancient grandfather was (drum roll) her Caucasian so-called ‘owner.’
Regrettably,
there was a widely-observed practice among slave owners of what has been
referred to as “going out back;” i.e., visiting their female slaves in the
darkness of the night, and forcing conjugal relations upon them.
I have
discovered documentation which proves both my mother’s and father’s ancestors
were slave owners. From time to time I would tease my father, (though it is far
from humorous) and declare that his slave-owning grandfathers probably “went
out back,” and enjoyed the non-negotiable services of their black female
slaves. To which daddy would respond, “Oh no. My grandfathers were better men
than that!” To which I would reply, “But how noble were they, if they were
willing to subjugate fellow human beings to a life of involuntary servitude?”
Going out
back, indeed!
And eons
before the advent of birth control, the result of this forced union between
master and slave was the conception of mulatto offspring, (who looked a bit too
much like their owner for comfort) and who remained with their mother, and who were,
in turn, forced to work on their father’s plantation.
Pt. 6
Since I
received the results of my mother’s DNA test, I have often reflected on the
almost certain conclusion that my ancient grandmother was black, that my
ancient grandfather was not only white, but that the product of their union, the
next in line of my successive grandmothers or grandfathers, joined the ranks of
the slave population who worked the plantation on which they resided, and were
added to the master’s work force.
And if, and
when subsequent generations of slaves became a “bit too white for comfort,” there
is every reason to believe they were granted their freedom. And, of course,
with the Emancipation Proclamation, and the end of the Civil War, every slave
on every plantation was finally allowed to go free.
And there
is, as Paul Harvey was prone to say, a rest of the story.
It is well understood
that the majority of today’s African-American population have a minority white
bloodline in their family tree. They not only took the surname of their ancient
so-called masters, but as Fredrick Douglass said about himself,
"I appear this evening as a thief and a
robber. I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master, and ran off
with them.”
The
implication? He, and the majority of black Americans, are descended from black
African slave women, and their white slave owners.
As scripture
admonishes us,
“These
things ought not to be.”
Pt. 7
I have
wondered what my mother’s reaction might have been to the results of her DNA
test, i.e. the evidence of an African bloodline. Since she grew up in the “Old
South,” and in the context of her family unit black Americans were called by
the N word, there is little doubt she would have been not only disillusioned,
but dismayed and dejected with the news.
Speaking for
myself, I am perfectly fine with this revelation. Taking my mother’s DNA test
and my own into account, I have discovered I have a myriad of genetic variables
‘circulating’ in my physiological bloodlines.
English,
Scottish, Irish, Welsh, German, Austrian, Danish, Spanish, Italian, Greek,
Arab, Armenian (or possibly Russian), Sub-Saharan (Black) African, (and
documentation which leads me to believe I have a ‘smidgen’ of Native American,
as well as Jewish heritage).
I think I must
be a walking, talking, living, breathing United Nations! A regular American “melting
pot.”
But to
return to the object of my thesis. How inestimably sad that men and women ever
treated other men and women as they did in days gone by. Sadder still, that
members of my own extended family, and the extended families of many of my
readers were ever involved in such a despicable practice as slavery.
Since I
became privy to the results of my mother’s DNA test, it seems I have
experienced a virtual epiphany. ‘Til now, I only thought I understood the
trials and triumphs of those peoples from the Dark Continent, who were taken
against their will, and who were transported in shackles to the New World.
I think now
it is a bit more ‘real’ than heretofore. I certainly have an innate empathy for
my black ancestors; which was conceived as the result of information to which I
have only recently been privy.
I should
like to have known my immigrant African grandmother. I’m hopeful she was
treated kindly, that her sufferings were few, and that before her passing she
knew what it meant to come and go as she pleased.
By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary" Vol. 79. Copyright pending
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