She doesn’t look blackish. In fact, she’s a blond. Her mother is Swedish, and she has a bunch of second cousins in Jonkoping.
But it turns out that her grandmother, Jane Helm of Drake, Missouri, was passing all her life. And she carried the secret to her deathbed.
Suddenly it all made sense. The face powder. The parasol. The elbow-length gloves. The high-necked dresses. It wasn’t Victorian formality carried into the 20th century. It was a cover-up.
The evidence of Jane’s ancestry comes from two sources: Census records and a mitochondrial DNA test.
Jane Helm had a brother – my wife’s great-uncle. Born April 4, 1893. Strangled by the umbilical cord. The mother’s “nativity” is Negro. The son’s race is black.
We don’t have the birth certificate for Jane. But we know that the mtDNA test, which traces ancestry through the mother’s line, lists L-type haplogroups, which are typical of West Africa, Ethiopia and Mozambique.
Jane Helm’s father came from Switzerland to America, bought a farm in rural Missouri after the Civil War and married a black woman. I imagine that only a foreigner would have done it. Southern Missouri is still the South, even today.
The ironic part is that Jane’s living children, even after seeing the mtDNA results and the Census records, won’t accept her heritage. They talk about the “Mohawk” in the family – a phrase that Southerners tell me is a codeword.
{ 4 comments }
You wish. Your wife is white and so are you. Plus, what is Mohawk a code word for, exactly? Casino owner? Also I happen to know for a fact that you have no idea what an L-type haplogroup is and neither do I. As Auntie Lena says, we’re all from Africa if you go far enough back.
Hi. I’m trying to contact Mr Dan Armstrong. I’m a French journalist based in Los Angeles and I’m writing a book on Barack Obama for France. I’d like to ask him a few questions. Thank you very much.
Guillaume Serina
g.serina@sbcglobal.net
What the heck is this post talking about. I came here from a link off the New York Times and have NO IDEA what the first post on this page means. Context?
So was your wife’s mother 1/2, 1/4, or 1/8? If your wife is not 1/8 Negro African (as opposed to Arab African, such as Barack H Obama, Jr, who is 1/2 Caucasion, 7/16 Arab African [Kenyan, verified by documents from Jomo Kenyatta's government], and 1/16 Negro African) . . . if she’s not at least 1/8 Negro African, in the USofA she’s not legally considered black. And future generations, unless they have additional close Negro African connections are not legally considered black.
Why isn’t Barack H Obama, Jr, more honest about his racial heritage and either call himself “Caucasian” or “Arab” because in the USofA, he’s not legally one of the “black folk” he tries to bond with. And I wonder how they would react if they knew that one Barack H Obama, Jr’s forebears was an Arab Slave Trader.
Hey, I got your point. Dunno what the problem was with the others. Maybe it’s a “Southern” thing? I have a near relative who “passed” too. But she was Full Blooded Cherokee. The “Mohawk” slang is a new one for me. It’s okay to be true to your heritage and I wish more people would be so. Genetic memory is so liberating. Peace Out.
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