Obama's mom was not really "white" [View all]

[fried eggs]

New research has uncovered surprising findings about President Obama’s ancestry.

Researchers at Ancestry.com have discovered that his lineage does include at least one black slave but not on his Kenyan father’s side. Obama’s white mother is most likely a direct descendant of one of the first documented African slaves in the United States, said the team of genealogists.

Its team, while lacking definitive proof, said its research “strongly suggests” Obama’s family tree — on his mother’s side — stretches back nearly four centuries to a slave in colonial Virginia named John Punch.

In 1640, John Punch, an African, was a servant in Virginia who escaped, was caught and sentenced to remain enslaved to his master for life.

The Ancestry.com team said records suggested that Punch fathered children with a white woman, who passed her free status to those children, giving rise to a family of a slightly different surname, the Bunches. The researchers said over time, as the Bunches continued to marry, they became prominent landowners in colonial Virginia and were known as white.

http://thegrio.com/2012/07/30/obamas-mother-stanley-ann-dunham-a-descendant-of-a-black-slave/