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This fascinating article in the NY Times this week discusses recent research unearthing Michelle Obama's lineage back to 1852. Although it was most certainly hyped due to the evidence of her having white ancestors (front page of the NY Times, appearances on Good Morning America emphasizing the black/white issue), the history is nonetheless important, if only for the fact that we now know the path taken by this most historic figure (our first black First Lady):

In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.

In his will, she is described simply as the "negro girl Melvinia." After his death, she was torn away from the people and places she knew and shipped to Georgia. While she was still a teenager, a white man would father her first-born son under circumstances lost in the passage of time.

In the annals of American slavery, this painful story would be utterly unremarkable, save for one reason: This union, consummated some two years before the Civil War, represents the origins of a family line that would extend from rural Georgia, to Birmingham, Ala., to Chicago and, finally, to the White House.

This is the key to this story, which was undoubtedly repeated millions of times over. It's unlikely that the next black First Lady will receive such scrutiny, but for now, in 2009, it's a first:

Now the more complete map of Mrs. Obama's ancestors -- including the slave mother, white father and their biracial son, Dolphus T. Shields -- for the first time fully connects the first African-American first lady to the history of slavery, tracing their five-generation journey from bondage to a front-row seat to the presidency.

"She is representative of how we have evolved and who we are," said Edward Ball, a historian who discovered that he had black relatives, the descendants of his white slave-owning ancestors, when he researched his memoir, "Slaves in the Family."

"We are not separate tribes of Latinos and whites and blacks in America," Mr. Ball said. "We've all mingled, and we have done so for generations."

Ball emphasizes the most important aspect of this research: it's part of our American heritage from which we cannot run away. You should read the entire article. It's very moving.

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