Roots, relations and realizations

Family trees are relics most often found in the bottoms of dusty trunks in basements across America, tossed in there among old photo albums and elementary school sports trophies.

If you ask someone about their ancestry, especially for Americans who have mixed ancestry that can be traced back to just about any part of the globe, the answer will be some colorful combination of Irish, Italian, Russian, German, English, Greek, Polish, Chinese, Japanese or just about any other ethnicity that exists. Probe a little more and someone might tell you when their grandparents or great-grandparents came to America, and usually leave it at that.

It's probably a good idea to get familiar with your genealogical roots because if your great-uncle Ralph was schizophrenic or great-grandmother Helga had leukemia, there's a good chance you could end up with one of those ailments, and some lifestyle changes may be in order.

But a closer look at your roots may reveal some additional very shocking surprises, as Al Sharpton discovered. The outspoken preacher and civil rights activist recently found out that his great-grandfather Coleman Sharpton was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond. Her grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. The typically fiery and forward Sharpton was dumbfounded by this newfound knowledge. "I couldn't describe to you the emotions I have had ... everything from anger to outrage to reflection to some pride and glory," he said, and in typical Sharpton style, he is already out relaying his message, saying, "In the story of the Thurmonds and the Sharptons is the story of the shame and the glory of America."

Al Sharpton grew up in Brooklyn and made a name for himself in a very unforgiving world for African Americans by demonstrating his talent at the pulpit as a preaching prodigy and becoming an ordained Pentecostal minister at age 10. He has fought relentlessly for civil rights alongside notable figures like Jesse Jackson and has run for president various times.

Strom Thurmond, on the other hand, grew up in the South and was a segregationist as a senator for South Carolina who served for five decades in the U.S. Congress. He was a vehement foe of civil rights legislation, although he eventually moved away from this stance and moderated his views. Soon after his death in 2003, it was revealed that at age 22, Thurmond fathered a daughter, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, with a 16-year-old black maid who worked for his family.

Talk about irony. Two totally different men linked by one of the darkest and most shameful American traditions.

But politicians are not the only ones to have fascinating family connections. A July 2006 article on LiveScience called "Everyone has Royal Roots" quotes genealogy researchers who are confident that the odds are virtually 100 percent that everyone on Earth is a descendant of royalty, one way or another.

The article uses Brooke Shields as an interesting example of just how connected and confusing genealogy can be. Shields is the descendent of the famous Florentine Medici family, Charlemagne, Spanish warrior El Cid, William the Conqueror, King Harold and five popes, among other ancestors. The article also outlines a probable Shield lineage to, gasp, the Prophet Muhammad, prophet of Islam. Who would have thought that all-American, wholesome, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Brooke Shields could have such a cacophony of roots? Who knows what our very own lineage holds, and seeing as that it could hold a heck of a lot, we all might just be more related to each other than we thought.

Reflecting on his own recent discovery, Sharpton said, "If we open the scars just to leave them open, we've done a misdeed to both sides. We should open them and deal with them toward healing them so we can come together on some genuine level." One hopes that Americans will take this advice to heart, and be inspired to look into their own genealogy where they might find some of their very own shocking surprises, and perhaps some things in common with each other and the rest of humanity.

Reach Hanady Kader at opinion@thedaily.washington.edu.