This last post will bring some information about possible well-known people who have African blood or were possibly mulatto. These theories are still being fleshed out.
J.Edgar Hoover
It was a secret in many black circles that Hoover was passing as white. Apparently, some black communities in the East, it was generally believed Edgar had black roots and was even referred to as a “soul brother.” Writer Gore Vidal, who grew up in Washington, D.C. in the 1930’s also said in an interview: “It was always said in my family and around the city that Hoover was mulatto. And that he came from a family that passed.”
Millie McGhee wrote a book about the subject called, Secrets Uncovered: J. Edgar Hoover Passing For White. She states, “In the late 1950;s, I was a young girl growing up in rural McComb, Mississippi. A story had been passed down through several generations that the land we lived on was owned by the Hoover family. My grandfather told me that this powerful man, Edgar, was his second cousin, and was passing for white. If we talked about this, he was so powerful he could have us all killed. I grew up terrified about all this.”
Later as an educator and researcher she unearthed enough information by digging through altered court records, oral interviews with both white and black Hoovers and the help of licensed genealogists to substantiate the rumors she had heard as a child that Hoover was a relative. “Because of Edgar’s anti-black history, I am not proud of this lineage but history must be based on truth,” she said.
Jacqueline Onassis
Was Michelle Obama our first African-American First Lady? Or was it Jackie O? Jacqueline Onassis is a member of the van Salee’s family, famous for their “mulatto” heritage.
Jackie O, perhaps America’s most emulated and admired First Lady, descended from a family known as the van Salee’s, who were described as “mulatto” in the 17th century. This family traced its lineage in part to a Dutch mariner named Jan Jensen, who turned Turk (what some Europeans called “going native”), which was more popular than common history reveals.
It is widely believed Jensen fathered two children, Anthony and Abraham van Salee, by a Moorish concubine. Following a dispute with his white wife, Anthony van Salee was exiled to territory across the river, where he became Brooklyn’s first settler. Until a few decades ago, this property adjoining Coney Island was called Turk’s Island after Anthony van Salle — the term “Turk,” in his day being synonymous with Moor (North African). A descendant, John van Salee De Grasse, born in 1825, was the first black American formally educated as a doctor. When Jackie Kennedy was asked about her van Salee roots during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, she called her ancestors “Jewish.” Of course, her socialite father, born in 1891, was nicknamed “Black Jack” Bouvier for his dark complexion. Not only Kennedy Onassis, but well-borns Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Vanderbilt (and thus Anderson Cooper), are van Salee descendants.
Alexander Hamliton
For black history buffs, it’s really all about the Hamiltons. Alexander Hamilton isn’t just the man on the $10 bill, he was the United States’ first Secretary of the Treasury.
His mother, Rachel Fawcett Lavain, was said to be of “mixed blood” and his father was the son of a Scottish Duke. Alexander’s older brother was dark-skinned and treated as black. But Alexander was light enough to pass and went on to establish the first national bank in the American colonies, founded the U.S. mint and wrote most of the Federalist Papers.