Oprah was not at all surprised by this news. “I’ve heard great stories,” she said, “about my grandfather being the businessman that he was.” She also heard all about the vicious racism that surrounded the lives of her grandparents and their neighbors—and how education offered the only way out of this morass. “My father,” she said, “often tells this story about my grandfather not wanting his wife and daughters to have to go and work for the white man or work in the white man’s kitchen, because he understood, many times, that, you know, Mr. White Man would be abusing those women and that there would be nothing that he could do about it. What he always wanted to do was to be able to be the provider in such a way for his family that he would never have to put the women in the family in that position. He understood that education was the open door to freedom for them. So thanks to him, all my father’s siblings were well-educated, and every time I went to their house, that’s all anybody ever talked about. ‘So-and-So was in school, So-and-So’s finishing school and graduating, So-and-So’s going to college.’ It was where I got that belief system. It came from that part of the family.”
Talking to Oprah’s father, Vernon, we learned another remarkable thing about his parents. Vernon told us that whenever his father encountered white people, Elmore would tip his hat and say “Yes, sir” and “No, sir.” Vernon believes that his father felt compelled to do this, and Vernon had trouble accepting that. He feared that his father, however much he may have loved him, was just another Uncle Tom. But years later Vernon was shocked to learn that Elmore was quite the opposite—and that in fact in 1965 he and Beatrice housed two civil-rights workers in a back bedroom of their home. Vernon couldn’t believe what his father had done, how much of his economic stability and security he was willing to risk to further this political cause, to which he had seemingly been oblivious for decades.
According to Vernon, the sheriff came to Elmore—a white sheriff, of course—and said to him, “You’re one of the most respected Negras in this area. Now, other black people think that you’re sending the message that it’s okay to support the civil-rights movement.” And Elmore replied, “Well, if you want to know what message I’m sending, go to that civil-rights march on Sunday, because I’ll be sitting in the front row, sending my message—it’s time for a change!”
Oprah had never heard this story before I told it to her. And it surprised her, the same way it astonished her father when he first heard it. It was as if her grandfather, a mild-mannered man, conservative in his habits, had become a fiery black militant, seemingly overnight.
We could not confirm Vernon’s account of his father’s conversation with the sheriff, but we were able to track down the two civil-rights workers whom Elmore housed—Luther Mallett, an African American from Kosciusko, and Matthew Rinaldi, a white college student from Long Island. Both testify to the role Elmore played in the movement in Mississippi. Indeed, they said that both Elmore and Beatrice were strong supporters of the civil-rights movement and that they had placed themselves in great danger by housing them. They recall that the couple was subjected to violent threats and that there was a cross burning on the lawn of the Winfrey home. They also told us that after a freedom house in nearby McCool, Mississippi, had been burned down by local whites, Elmore used his carpentry skills to help rebuild it, making the dangerous trip between Kosciusko and McCool even as armed Klansmen were traveling the same roads.
Oprah was pleased to hear these stories. They ultimately reduced her to tears of pride. And going back another generation on her paternal line, we found even more remarkable ancestors. Elmore’s parents were Sanford Winfrey, born in 1872 in Poplar Creek, and Ella Staples, born in 1874 in Choctaw County, Mississippi. Ella’s family can be traced forward to the Staple Singers, who are Oprah’s distant cousins. Her husband, Sanford, was a farmer and may have been a teacher as well. Many towns in rural Mississippi had a one-room schoolhouse for black children. Vernon claimed that Sanford was the head teacher and that he taught all subjects through all ages. Friends and neighbors even called him “the professor.”
We couldn’t find a record of Sanford’s being paid to teach, so we cannot confirm Vernon’s claim. But Vernon was able to evoke a sense of the importance that education played in his family’s life. He says that his father, Elmore, often spoke of how Vernon’s grandfather Sanford insisted that his children learn to read and write—and that Elmore had two sisters who became schoolteachers.
Going back one more generation on Oprah’s paternal line, we come to Sanford Winfrey’s parents, Oprah’s great-great-grandparents, Constantine and Violet Winfrey. And here Oprah’s deep roots grow even more fascinating to me. In fact, the story of Constantine Winfrey is one of the most remarkable stories about a former slave that I have ever encountered.
Constantine Winfrey was born in October 1836 in Georgia and was married to a woman named Violet, who was born in North Carolina in 1839. She didn’t have a last name, or if she did, it was never recorded. It seems that Violet was acquired in North Carolina, where she is listed as having been born, and then shipped somehow to Mississippi, no doubt because of the cotton boom. Constantine and Violet were married around 1859. They had eight children together.
Oprah knew that the Winfrey name came from this man, Constantine—she had heard of him in her family’s lore, and she knew him to be the highest branch on the family tree—but she’d never heard anything more about him. And she had no idea where his last name came from. I think we found out. Constantine Winfrey probably took his name because he was a slave owned by a man named Absalom F. Winfrey. There is no concrete proof that Constantine was owned by Absalom or that he took his name, but in the 1870 census Constantine is listed as living three houses down from Absalom, and Absalom, like Constantine, also moved to Mississippi from Georgia. Furthermore, an 1850 slave schedule indicates that Absalom had seven slaves, the profile of one of whom fits Constantine exactly.
As for who Constantine was, the 1870 census indicates that at that time he and his wife were living with their five children and that both Constantine and Violet were illiterate. This is of course to be expected, since almost no slaves could read. But I learned something remarkable about Constantine, something that would prove to be consistent among later generations of Winfreys, including Oprah. Ten years later, in the 1880 census, Constantine and Violet are listed again, but now Constantine can read. And he can write.
Oprah and I were dumbfounded. At thirty-five, as a newly freed slave, he couldn’t read and he couldn’t write. At forty-five, just ten years later, he could do both. In ten years he had mastered literacy as an ex-slave. And that’s while he was still having to work as a farmer every day, pick cotton, earn a living, raise and take care of a growing family. What’s more, Oprah’s great-great-grandfather not only embraced education himself—he emphasized education to his children and to the rest of the colored section in his hometown. We located a report from the Montgomery County School Board dated 1906 indicating that Constantine Winfrey moved an entire schoolhouse to his property so that the black children in his town could get an education.
Why did people on both sides of Oprah’s family care so deeply about literacy and education? We don’t have a simple answer. Even Oprah didn’t know. But she was affected strongly by the revelation. “I can’t even begin to explain what that is,” she said, “but I think it’s deep that that is where I’ve come from. I mean, I’ve always sort of understood on the periphery how important education is, and also inside myself, but I didn’t know that that was the root of where I came from.”
Indeed, as we have seen, through several of her ancestral lines, Oprah is at the tail end of a long chain of people who loved education. While I cannot prove this scientifically, I happen to believe that this is why she is who she is. Or rather, it is deeply reflective of who she is. But there’s another side to the story of her roots, another element that has defined her family since Constantine. And that element is the ownership of land, a factor as crucial to the shapi
ng of her family as education was.
I wanted to discover how Constantine supported himself after slavery. Where did he get this land that he used to feed his family for generations, the land to which he moved this schoolhouse? How did an illiterate slave in 1870 eventually come to own acres and acres of prime farmland within just a couple of decades? As it turns out, Constantine had purchased the land in two different parcels. And the story of those purchases, contained in the land deeds and mortgage agreements, is not only remarkable, it is the only story of its kind that many other historians of this period and I have ever encountered.
Constantine bought the first parcel in 1876 from a white man by the name of John R. Watson. It was obtained through a highly unusual means of payment. According to the deed, Constantine agreed to give Watson eight bales of “lint,” or cleaned cotton, in exchange for eighty acres of land. But there was a catch: Constantine didn’t have any cotton. To get his land, he had to grow it and pick it first. The deed stipulates that Watson give Constantine usage rights on the eighty acres with the understanding that in two years Constantine would produce his eight bales. Each bale of lint cotton had to weigh four hundred pounds. So that’s thirty-two hundred pounds of cotton. To get this much clean cotton, Constantine probably had to grow and harvest about four times as much, because of the debris and detritus contained in harvested cotton. In other words, Constantine had to grow and pick and clean more than six tons of cotton, and do so in two years!
Now, remember: John Watson is a white man, and this is 1876, the year Reconstruction ended and the Old South really started rising again. Needless to say, this was a very bad time for blacks. Moreover, throughout the 1870s the entire country was in terrible economic shape. There was essentially a depression that lasted the whole decade. So white people were poor, and black people were poorer. And these are the circumstances under which Constantine signs this agreement, promising that he would harvest this monster load of cotton in just two years. In addition, the agreement stated that if he could not deliver the eight bales of cotton in the allotted time period, he would be forced to vacate the land and lose all the cotton he had picked. In effect, Constantine Winfrey signed a two-year mortgage, with full payment due at the end of the agreed-upon time. It was all or nothing by the end of those two years. To me this sounds like an absolutely impossible set of tasks to fulfill.
But somehow Constantine pulled it off. And we know that because we found two deeds, both dated 1881, indicating that Constantine Winfrey had satisfied his obligation and owned his land free and clear. What’s more, we also found a third deed, from 1882, indicating that Constantine had purchased a second plot of land, another eighty acres adjacent to the Watson plot. He paid $250 for this plot, which was a lot of money in 1882, and which indicates that he must have been doing very well developing his first eighty acres.
So Constantine managed to be a thrifty, productive farmer at a time when the status and power of black people were falling apart in the South. Constantine Winfrey somehow, through sheer grit and energy and determination, managed to thrive. Not only was his land deed unusual, it was possibly unique. I could find no other instance in which a black man used cotton as the payment of a mortgage in the former slaveholding South.
Oprah rightly sees this land as the heroic monument it surely is, for this was the very first property that any member of her family ever owned. It was this farm that sustained and supported her family for generations. Just as important, it was this farm that played a crucial role in furthering the progress of Poplar Creek’s black community, by becoming the literal foundation for their education. This is fascinating to a historian like myself, because it’s a patent reminder that the black community never consisted of one economic or social class. It had parts, or economic subdivisions. Even in the earliest years following slavery, the black community had a very distinct class structure, a structure that was sometimes based on color, sometimes based on education, sometimes based on property ownership. Among the slaves freed following the Civil War, this was really the start of the black middle class. And of all these factors contributing to class status, property ownership was most important, because it had the potential of being the longest-lasting.
Stories such as those of Constantine Winfrey are all too rare in our textbooks. If we encountered this story in a film, either Watson would abscond with the eight bales of cotton or the Klan would burn Constantine out shortly after he had constructed his new home! Tragically, we know that such betrayals did occur all too frequently. But such success stories like Constantine’s, no matter how rare, reveal how truly complex and variegated was the multi-layered set of economic and social relationships between black people and white people in the postbellum southern United States. Stories such as these are no doubt far more common than previously imagined, and they wait to be discovered in the historical records of our individual ancestors, hidden under the lush foliage of the branches of our family trees.
Constantine Winfrey’s remarkable story is also where the paper trail of Oprah Gail Winfrey’s family tree ends. Constantine and his wife outlived slavery and made their respective marks on history. Prior to them, however, there’s no written record of any of Oprah’s ancestors, at least none we’ve yet been able to find. The slave system obliterated any vestige of them. So now it was time to turn to DNA in the hopes of tracing her family all the way back to Africa.
Before we conducted her DNA analysis, I asked Oprah how she’d felt about Africa when she was growing up—was it somewhere to which she wanted to be connected? Or was she embarrassed about the images of Africans she saw on television and in films? Today she is deeply connected to Africa, devoting large amounts of her time and resources to humanitarian causes there, but she freely admits that when growing up she was embarrassed by her African roots, just as many of us in our generation were. “I was ashamed,” she responded. “If anybody asked, ‘You from Africa?’ in school, I didn’t want anybody to talk about it. And if it was ever discussed in any classroom I was in, it was always about the Pygmies and the, you know, primitive and barbaric behavior of Africans. And so I remember wanting to get over that period really quickly. The bare-breasted National Geographic pictures? I was embarrassed by all of it. I was one of those people who felt, ‘I’m not African, I’m American.’ They were primitive.”
Oprah’s honesty was quite refreshing. And I daresay her views were held by most African Americans until very recently. As a preadolescent I recoiled just as Oprah did. But also like Oprah, when I saw positive images of Africa during the Black Power era, and then when I started to study Africa in college and in graduate school, as I began to understand more, I began to feel a deep connection to the place and its people. Today, like most African Americans, Oprah sees Africa as it really is—a vast continent, full of diverse cultures, ancient civilizations, and boundless beauty. After centuries of separation, we’re eager to reconnect on many levels—spiritually, economically, and politically.
I asked Oprah what she most hoped DNA would answer about her African ancestry. She told me that she’s often been told she was a Zulu—a descendant of that great South African nation who fought so hard and so effectively against the British for so many years. She said, “When I’m in Africa, I always feel that I look Zulu. I feel connected to the Zulu tribe.” The Zulus are legendary, and Oprah has talked about her possible Zulu connection more than once on her television program. She said to me that it would be a great shock if it turned out she was not a Zulu. I hoped, for her sake, that the test results would verify her instincts.
But Oprah’s DNA told a different story. Our analysis of her mitochondrial DNA, which bears evidence of her maternal line’s lineage, revealed that Oprah shares genetic traits with people in three parts of Africa: the Kpelle people in Liberia, the Bamileke people in Cameroon, and a Bantu-speaking tribe in Zambia. We also found identical matches to her among the Gullah people in South Carolina.
These results meant she could not be descended from a Zulu.
Indeed, as it turns out, none of the Africans brought to America as slaves had Zulu heritage. The Zulu homeland in southern Africa was simply too far away from the main centers of the trade for any Zulu person to have been captured and sold into the transatlantic slave trade.
Oprah needed a moment to process this information. She still feels that spiritually she is a Zulu—which is a very healthy way to think about our putative African or European ancestry. And despite not being of Zulu descent, Oprah has a very rich African genetic heritage nonetheless: Zambia, Cameroon, Liberia—her genes are spread all over the continent. Indeed, as I explained to her, Oprah’s DNA shows up in so many different places because of the history of Africa. She is herself living proof of how, over centuries, even millennia, tribes migrated great distances, and people were taken away as captives in wars, or sold into slavery, or married into other tribes.
Discussing her results with the historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood, I tried to find out where Oprah’s first enslaved ancestor might have come from. The Bantu in Zambia, according to Thornton and Heywood, were generally not victims of the transatlantic slave trade. They were simply too isolated, and so, for the most part, were Oprah’s Bamileke ancestors, who lived in the interior of modern Cameroon. This means that Oprah’s other exact match—her DNA hit among the Kpelle people in Liberia—most likely points toward the origin of her first enslaved matrilineal ancestor.
Indeed, this result, combined with her DNA match among the Gullah people in South Carolina, squares nicely with the history of the slave trade, according to Thornton and Heywood.
The Gullah were a very unusual group of enslaved Africans. During the eighteenth century, they were brought to islands off South Carolina and Georgia from an African region that encompassed modern-day Senegal, Liberia, and Angola. Prized for their skills in harvesting rice, these people were able to remain on these isolated islands for generations, largely sheltered from direct contact with whites, who preferred to live away from the pestilential coast—and thus they were able to develop their own unique language and culture, which have been handed down from generation to generation along with their own distinctive DNA signatures.
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