American Tapestry

American Tapestry grew out of an article co-written by Rachel L. Swarms for the New York Times, in which First Lady Michelle Obama's family tree was researched. It was discovered that Ms. Obama had biracial heritage, and that a white woman named Joan Tribble, despite her family's misgivings, had a DNA test that confirmed that her ancestor, who owned Ms. Obama's great-great-great-grandmother, was the father of her child.

This slave's name was Melvinia, and she plays a major role in the book, which, as the title suggests, is a patchwork of stories regarding Ms. Obama's ancestors. "Melvinia's descendants would soar to unprecedented heights, climbing from slavery to the pinnacle of American power in five generations. Her great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Michelle Obama, would become the nation's first African American First Lady. Yet Mrs. Obama would take that momentous step without knowing Melvinia's name or the identity of the white man who was her great-great-great-grandfather. For more than a century, Melvinia's secret held."

The secondary theme of this book is inter-racial procreation, as Swarms points out that all four of Ms. Obama's grandparents had Caucasian blood. Swarms also points out: "Sex between white men and black women was a regular part of life on big plantations and small farms. Masters and their young songs, overseers, and others often preyed on their female slaves. Some white men wooed their enslaved women with small presents and promises of privilege. Others made no pretense of such pleasantries."
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The book weaves the story of the various roots of Ms. Obama's ancestors, without regard to chronology. This can make it difficult to remember who is who, although there are helpful diagrams. Much of the book is the biographies of ancestors, such as Dolphus Shields, Melvinia's sons by her master, who lived for almost ninety years. Ms. Obama's relatives came from various parts of the south, such as Georgia and North and South Carolina, but they all ended up migrating north to Chicago.

While this book is passably interesting, it doesn't quite deserve it's book length. The article was probably much more to the point. Swarms repeats herself often, wringing her hands in type about whether Melvinia was raped or not. Part of the problem is that Melvinia didn't leave behind anything which indicated what she thought, so Swarms is left to speculate. She also writes in several different ways about how white masters took advantage of their slaves, not just in the paragraph above.

Perhaps what is the biggest problem here is that most of this has been told better elsewhere. The story of a biracial family was much more vividly told in The Hemingses of Monticello; the story of the migration of African Americans to the north was better told in The Warmth of Other Songs; and, quite frankly, Ms. Obama's family tree seems pretty typical of any family that came out of slavery, and can't compare to Alex Haley's groundbreaking Roots. There's nothing terribly dramatic here. The only ancestor who fought in the Civil War was a step-great-great-great-grandfather, and the rest were hard-working folks with nothing particularly distinctive about them. Sure, it's amazing that in five generations a family has gone from slavery to the White House, but for all of Ms. Obama's accomplishments, she is First Lady because she married well. Because Barack Obama is not descended from American slaves, Ms. Obama has become the subject.

But for those who are interested in reading about genealogical stories and the history of African Americans, this will be a must read. Unfortunately, Swarms is not able to go all the way back to Africa in her search.