Beto O’Rourke says he and his wife are descended from slave owners in open essay
Beto O’Rourke has revealed that members of his family once owned enslaved people.
On Sunday, the Democratic presidential candidate wrote that research by The Guardian into their family histories revealed that he and his wife, Amy Sanders O’Rourke, both have ancestors who owned human beings.
In an essay called “Rose and Eliza,” after the 27- and 23-year-old women his ancestor owned, Mr O’Rourke shared his reaction to the documents that showed his family’s involvement in slavery.
“The way that fortune was passed through the generations from Andrew to me, misfortune was passed through the generations from Rose and Eliza to their descendants who are alive today,” he wrote, referring to his paternal great-great-great grandfather, Andrew Cowan Jasper, who enslaved the two women. “Everything their descendants have accomplished in their lives is despite having all of these odds stacked against them.”
The new documents also revealed that the former Texas congressman had ancestors who served in the Confederate Army.
Mr O’Rourke said in April that he supports legislation to study reparations for African Americans, telling the audience at a civil rights conference that he hoped to address “the injustices that have been visited and continue to be visited on people.”
The idea of reparations to correct the inequality created by America’s slavery practices, once considered far-fetched, has become a litmus test in the Democratic race for president, with many of the more progressive candidates coming out in favour of studying possible ways to implement the complicated premise.
In his essay, Mr O’Rourke said he was struck by his new role in the conversation, writing: “Something that we’ve been thinking about and talking about in town hall meetings and out on the campaign — the legacy of slavery in the United States — now has a much more personal connection.”
He wrote that, if elected, he would implement education and healthcare policies to help correct the gross disparity between Americans of different backgrounds, as well as continuing to “support reparations, beginning with an important national conversation on slavery and racial injustice.”
