Genealogy and politics

Interesting genealogical "skeletons" have been found lurking in the closets of public officials. Recently the news media has focused attention on the revelations of Ancestry.com staffers and their discovery of links between the ancestors of Al Sharpton and the ancestors of the late Strom Thurmond. This seems to be turning into a trend with the next presidential election on the horizon, evidence has been brought to light concerning the ancestry of presidential hopeful, Barack Obama. It appears in early findings that the Illinois Senator's mother's Irish ancsetors were slave owners. What will they find for Hilary and Rudi? And you thought genealogy was boring. Actually I am impressed by their research. In that doing research for African American ancestors can often be very difficult due to a lack of records. It will be interesting to see more of the documentation used to verify these conclusions. However, if you have customers who wish to begin tracing their African American heritage we do have several useful titles in the collection. A recent addition is Henry Louis Gates's Finding Oprah's roots: finding your own would be of interest.