First lady's ancestry traced back to slave girl

A new investigation by the New York Times has traced First Lady Michelle Obama's family roots, uncovering a direct link from America's ugly legacy of slavery all the way to the White House.

Rachel Swarns is one of the Times reporters who co-wrote the story. She spoke to John Roberts on CNN’s “American Morning” Thursday. Below is an edited transcript of the interview.

John Roberts: You worked together with a genealogist to uncover Michelle Obama's roots. You traced them back to the 1840s. A young woman in South Carolina named Melvinia Shields. Tell us a little bit of the story. Who was Melvinia? How did she have children? How did this whole legacy get going?

Rachel Swarns: Well, Melvinia was a slave girl and she was Michelle Obama's great-great-great grandmother. And she first appears in the public records that we were able to find in 1850 when her owner, a farmer in South Carolina, a man by the name of David Patterson, mentions her in his will. And he basically says that he's leaving her, bequeathing her – a six-year-old girl – to his heirs. And she's valued a couple of years later at $475 and shipped off to his daughter in Georgia.

Roberts: At some point she had children with an unknown man, but it's believed that he was white?

Swarns: That's right. And so we were able to find the first link to a white ancestor in Michelle Obama's family. But we don't know who he was. What we know is that Melvinia had a son sometime around 1859 and that in the 1870 census, he's described as mulatto. His name is Dolphus Shields. We can speculate a little bit about who the man might have been, but we really don't know. In 1859, she was living on the Shields’ farm. Henry Shields, her owner, was in his 40s. He had several sons who were around, but there may have been people working on the farm, visitors there. We just don't know who that person was.

Roberts: Let's talk about Dolphus Shields. You traveled down to Birmingham, Alabama to speak to a woman named Bobbie Holt, who was raised by Dolphus Shields and his fourth wife. What did you learn about Dolphus from Bobbie?

Swarns: Well, Dolphus Shields is the biracial son of Melvinia and the unknown white man. He travels to Birmingham sometime in the late 1880s and he really carries his family line into the working class. Unlike his mother who was illiterate, he could read and write and he had a skill. He was a carpenter. And I was very lucky to be able to find a couple of older ladies who knew him, including Bobbie Holt. Bobbie Holt was taken into his family when she was about 2 years old. And he was an old man then. He was in his 70s. But he and his fourth wife raised her. And she remembers him as a very religious man, a very upright guy, who had a lot of rules in his house.

Roberts: Yeah, in fact, let me pull out a little bit of what you wrote about him. What Bobbie said about him. She said, “In his home, there was no smoking, no cursing, no gum chewing, no lipstick or trousers for ladies and absolutely no blues on the radio, which was reserved for hymns.” A strict and reverent man.

Swarns: Very much so. And he helped found a number of churches that still exist in Birmingham today, including Trinity Baptist Church and First Ebenezer Baptist Church. Mrs. Holt points out he was also a lot of fun and he told funny stories and the kids would always wait for him to get off the streetcar, because he carried peppermints for them.

Roberts: Where does the trail go from Birmingham to Chicago where Michelle Obama was born?

Swarns: Well, Dolphus Shields has a son and that was Robert Lee Shields. We don't know a whole lot about him. He sort of vanishes from the public records in his 30s. But Robert Lee has a son named Purnell. And Purnell and his mother migrate to Chicago sometime in the 1920s. And Purnell has a daughter, who is Michelle Obama's mother.

Roberts: Now, Melvinia Shields, she died in 1938. On her death certificate, under the heading of “who were her parents” is listed “unknown.” When you retrace the trail, does it end with Melvinia? Or is there some way to know who Melvinia's parents were and where Michelle Obama's family originally came from?

Swarns: It's very, very, very difficult to go back much further than this. In fact, the genealogist who we worked with said that Melivinia almost seemed like she was crying out to be found. It was really remarkable the documentation we found about her. But we have to remember that for slaves, for instance, if you look at records, often there are no last names, so it's very difficult. Many slave rosters only included slaves by their ages, not even by a first name. So it's remarkable that she appeared and that we were able to trace her to the present. It would be quite difficult to go back further than that.