Racial activist Angela Davis was shocked to learn she is descended from a passenger on the Mayflower, one of the first settlers in America.
Davis, who notoriously worked with the Communist Party USA and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and ’70s, learned of her ancestry from Henry Louis Gates Jr., host of the PBS program, "Finding Your Roots."
By tracing through her father's white father, Murphy Jones, Gates was able to determine that Davis' 10th great-grandfather was William Brewster, who came to the colonies in 1620 aboard the Mayflower.
"Do you know what you're looking at? That is a list of the passengers on the Mayflower," Gates said to Davis in a video clip shared on Twitter.
"No, I can't believe this," Davis replied, laughing. "No, my ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower."
She continued to protest Gates' finding, then responded, "That's a little bit too much to deal with right now."
"Would you ever in your wildest dreams think that you may have been descended from the people who laid the foundation of this country?" Gates asked.
"Never, never, never, never, never," she said.
The revelation drew response on social media.
"I find moments like this fascinating. I can trace all of my ancestors — two of whom are still living — to four ocean crossings between 1949 and 1952," NPR producer Julian Hayda tweeted. "To think that one's roots can go back 400 years — with tens of thousands of people between slave ships and the Mayflower — is astonishing."
National Review Online senior writer Michael Brendan Dougherty also commented on the findings.
"It's actually a beautiful reaction," Dougherty tweeted.
"Think about it from both perspectives. Almost certainly exploitation played its role. But someone who came on the Mayflower has a radical like Angela Davis as a descendant," he continued. "America is huge. Talk of divorce is senseless in light of this reality."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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