Great day to be in texas and today i have the honor and pleasure to be at the texas book festival serving as a moderator, and im pleased to be here with rachel l. Swams. I will tell you a few things about rachel because you came here to hear her and not me and our time is limited. She has worked for the New York Times since 1995. Reporting on domestic policy, national politics, immigration, the president ial campaign of 2004, and 2008, and first Lady Michele Obama and her role in the obama white house. I met rachel at an event this year where i bought a book, the book she wrote, american tapestry the story of the black, white, and multiracial ancestors of michelle obama. After hearing her talk, id bought six more copies. I bought them for all my family members and to give out as christmas gifts. Now after having read her book i can tell you it was a good investment. It helps me better understand my own family and many mysteries surrounding my own family. Rachel l. Swamss book is a compelling story that stirs deep emotions. It is also a story that would break them here and with that, lets welcome rachel l. Swams. [applause] thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming. In the years leading up to the president ial election, the focus seems to be on Barack Obamas roots and his family and the fact that he wrote his own biography. Now in your book american tapestry, you put the focus on Michele Obama. Tell us about how you got started doing that and what inspired you. I was writing about the first lady and the first family for the New York Times which was something of an unusual assignment. Typically the first family is covered by the white house reporters who chased the president around on air force one and in the Briefing Room and write about the first lady or first family when they have time that there was a sense in 2008 at the New York Times and other newspapers too that we might want to do things differently and this first africanamerican Family Living in this house, this White House Bill in part by slave labor, with slave labor would be written about regeneration to come and we wanted it to be part of documenting and chronicling that story. In january, before the inauguration, one of my colleagues was writing an article about the president and his Rainbow Family and we realize that the last minute we didnt know much about Michele Obamas ancestry. My colleague reach out to genealogist and asked her to do some digging. We didnt give her enough time. She didnt find it very much as we read a lovely story about the president and his Rainbow Family and we thought that was that. But unbeknownst to us the genealogists kept digging and in september of 2009, the first year the obamas were in the white house she called us back and said i found something really interesting. Would you be interested in covering it . I found myself on a plane to birmingham, alabama, where i visited churches, spent time in the archives, tried to find out as much as i could about the first ladys greatgrandfather who happened to be by racial and the story ran a month later on the front page of the New York Times about the offices parents, millennia, the first ladys great great great grandmother who was the slave girl valued at 475 in 1852 and the first ladys great, great grandfather who was a white man whose identity was a mystery. The day after the article ran, an editor sent me an email and said that was fascinating. A little snippet of the first ladys family tree. Would you think of doing a book on the old thing and that is how i got started. We are glad you got started on the book because it opens up a lot of information about families across america and the interconnectedness of many families. What i like about your book is it reads like a good suspense mystery or thriller. I suppose you had to be part detective and part researcher in unraveling the story. Even Michele Obama herself was unaware of some of the people in her family tree, both black and white. There are many families in america who are experiencing that same thing or who are unaware of their family tree and what that has hidden inside of it. I found the following passage insightful and which is also great prose and by wanted to read it. She never discussed who he was or what happened between them. Whether she was a victim of his brutality or a mistress, he treated affectionately, war whether she was loved in return. She went her way and he went his. And just like that, their families split down the middle. Children, grandchildren and greatgrandchildren, some black, some white and some in between scattered across the country as decades past, separated by the color line and a familys fierce determination to step beyond its painful truths in slavery. Obviously your research surprise and probably stunned both sides of the family. Tell us about at and how Michele Obamas family and the white side of the family reacted to the news. The first lady has long suspected she had white ancestors in her family tree, like many africanamericans do. But she had no idea who they were or where they lived for when they where and when they fit in her familys story. So i was able through dna testing to solve that mystery in her family. What i did was trace the descendants of mill the knee ats owners who lived in South Carolina and georgia, irishamerican families. The first ladys family. I tested them and in fact it is the most ordinary of american stories. The white shields and black shields are related. This is on the first ladys mothers side. Her mother is marion shields. Many americans are making these discoveries with dna testing, just finding these connections through ancestry. Com, doing their own genealogy. It is a kind of discovery that Many Americans are making but it is not an easy one for people. On both sides of the family, this was a hard realization, even though people know these things happen. Many members of the first ladys white extended family had no idea their ancestors had known slaves and while many people might like a connection to the white house, this was a most unsettling connection to the white house as you can imagine. It is not something most people expect, to have a reporter not on your door and say one of your ancestors may have owned the first ladys ancestors. And some people simply didnt want to talk about it. But some people were willing to grapple with the history and said it would not be what i would have chosen for myself but it is my history even if it is hard history. So some of the white descendants, distant cousins of the first lady went on this journey sharing their memories and records and dna as they explored what happened more than 100 years ago. It was also difficult too for the black side of the family because Michele Obamas uncle talked about the silence among africanamericans, about him trying over and over again to get his elders to talk about what they knew about slavery and what they knew about the different colors in the family and where the white ancestry came from and over and over again people refused to talk about it and it is one of these things that is hard for people to talk about even though it resonates still, this experience we think it is consigned to history books but it is part of our history. So getting people to talk and wrestle with this is not an easy thing. I can imagine. As you say, some people were ok with it and cooperated, and some werent okay with it. And didnt cooperate. I found that to be very interesting, reading the book, how both Sides Incorporated that into their histories and both sides response to that were similar and different. I enjoyed writing the New York Times article that you wrote because some of the photographs were in that article and you could actually see how people on both sides of the family, blackandwhite, resembled one another. That was one of the things before the dna test results came out. Some of the first ladys distant cousin didnt know they were distant cousin then but they were appearing at the photos of the Office Shields and ancestors, holding them side by side saying they were kind of i didnt reveal to them the dna results until the very end but by then they were not surprised. Do we have some photographs to show today . We do have some photographs. We will flip through them. This is the first lady as a baby with her nuclear family. Term mother and her father and her brother. This is joan triples, one of the first ladys distant cousins who were willing to go on this journey and shared with me what she knew about the family and her dna as well. This is the great granddaughter of dolphins shields. [inaudible] this is a question that just came from the audience. When we are talking about millbeena and her biracial son, what time period we are talking about. This is pearl. Nilbeena was remarkably well in life and i was able to interview two people who knew her which is astonishing but she lived until 1938 and i found two people who knew her in the last years of her life. Golf, her son, born in 19591861, he also live the remarkably long life. He died in 1950 and i was able to find three people who knew him as well. This is his daughter who move from birmingham to cleveland, ohio. This is dolphus shields, the first ladys great great grandfather with his son willie. He was biracial as i mentioned and quite a remarkable man in his own right. He was born into slavery in george and moved to birmingham, alabama as a young man where he became quite a notable person. He became a Property Owner in 1900. He was a carpenter and had his own business. He was a Founding Member of two churches that stand today and still open and running today. When he died the news of his passing was on the front page of the black newspaper. Another photo of dolphus shields, dolphus with his extended family. The tombstone of the man who owned millvinia, the tombstone of his son charles, marion shields to the testing suggest was most likely dolphuss father. This move to michelle ng obamas fathers side of the family, Michelle Obamas and and this is steve johnson, the first ladys greatgrandmother who traveled to four cities, she was a sharecroppers daughter born in 1879 and somewhere along the way she decided she did not want anything to do with the farming life and she was one of the first of Michele Obamas and sisters to set site on chicago in 1908. This is her husband who was a minister who also lived in chicago. This is the first ladys great great grandmother, and she arrived in illinois some time in the 1860s. The first lady describes herself as a south side girl but the family had no idea their roots in illinois go that far back. If you look at mary, you will understand why the family story says she was part cherokee. She obviously has a mixed lineage but i was never able to establish for sure whether that was true. This is the first ladys grandfather, a mislabeled slide, who left South Carolina and arrive in chicago around 1931. This is millvinia, the owner of millvinias brother. This is a photo, this is an amazing coat, there is a nice story behind this one. After the book was published and after an article about the book came out, i got an email from a woman who said i think that might meet my family, my husbands family and i think we have a photograph of them and in fact they did and it was the first photograph that i was able to find of millvinias owner and his family, the Shields Family. Millvinias owner, henry shields is the older man with the beard and dolphuss father is the welldressed man with the spectacle standing looking into the distance. It is a remarkable finding. I felt privileged to see it. I will skip to the last one. This is another remarkable moment which was after the book came out Clayton County, ga. Where millvinia was enslaved your active a monument to commemorate her life and they invited some of her descendants and that the most the last moment i thought some of the shields descendants might come and they did and the descendants of a slave and slave owner exchanging numbers, sharing a meal together. I dont know if they will be facebook friends for years to come but it was something to see. A great slide show. All of the people you mentioned are covered in the book. They all are characters in the book and one thing i found helpful was you do have a chart of Michele Obamas family tree, you can always look back and say this is how that person relates back to Michele Obama. But another thing i find interesting about your book is when we talk about slavery in this country we often talk about it as something only of the wealthy class. In other words if you were wealthy afford slaves and if you were a workingclass american you didnt really have slaves. You referenced Thomas Jefferson and sally hammons as kind of an example of a wealthy family that owned slaves. Butting your book, you bust that miffed because millvinia was a slave of a workingclass american, can you talk to was a little bit about that . Many of us when we think about slavery think about the jeffersons, we think about gone with the wind, the grand manner, the vast plantation. Michele obamas family, there were ancestors of hers who had that kind of history, the plantations of South Carolina. The family story does expose the enormous variation of life during slavery when which is not something we often think about. The Shields Family that owned millvinia they were not wealthy people at all land in some ways that was astonishing to the descendants who said to me we heard those shieldses never had two nickels to rub together. They were not wealthy family. The irishamericans who came some time in the 1700s, worked the land with their own hands, all we ended up owning slaves, shields married the daughter of a wealthy man. When that man with his fatherinlaw died inherited three slaves. The first ladys great great grandmother and she ended up in a rough Rural Community in georgia, the vast majority of people were not slave voters, white men worked the fields along the slaves they own if they owned annie and it was quite a different experience than the one we often think about. It was quite a different experience and i really enjoyed reading about the people of that day, how she worked the fields and the men who owned her worked the fields. I know that you were not able to determine the relationship between millvinia and the men who owned her. And i also know, code of silence. She never talked about it and her descendants never talked about it. I noticed the same thing in her own family and other families as well. It is about wilkerson who wrote about the great migration, the same code of silence in her family. What is up with that code of silence . This is a painful chapter of American History for many families. So i think at the time, people knew. It would have been very clear to people. The people i met and interviewed who knew millvinia and knew her son knew that she was a dark skin africanamerican woman who was born into slavery, had these very fair skin sons and no father, no husband around. They suspected but no one talked about it. People who knew dolphus shields suspected his great granddaughter said people whispered in the family that he had a white father but it was again something people just didnt talk about and there was a sense among African Americans really of trying to move forward, trying to move beyond and not burdening future generations with a painful history, of wanting to have children and grandchildren who had hopes and would find their way with that hope in this country and it is a remarkable story, generations from slavery to the white house. You can sort of understand why people wanted to keep quiet in some ways, but it is a lost art in a lot of ways. Talking with my own family, i tried and kind of a shame too because children were born out of wedlock and as you say africanamerican families, trying to move forward and parts of trying to move forward is being legitimate and getting an education and making sure that your relationships, people were legitimately married. Anything that pointed back words or made you illegitimate was not really something they wanted to talk about and have out there. It is too bad because it closed a lot of doors in our family and that is what you found in Michele Obamas family. Very fortunate, you were able to help and truly open those doors for her family. At least with been within her family, there are those conversations happening. As i said americans, ordinary americans across the country are making these discoveries with dna testing so these conversations are happening around the country. When you talk about marriage and the importance of legitimacy, one of the other stories which talks about the variations of the American Experience during slavery was the first ladys family had ancestors who were freed for decades before the civil war and one of the most interesting records i came across was a record which showed those members of her family who after the civil war went to the courthouse and lined up to get their marriages, their relationships legitimized and recognize under the law and the lot of people did that. I think that is right too. I wonder, i am curious, how did first Lady Michelle ng obama respond to the news when you talk to her or this was brought to her . One of the challenges for those of us writing about the first lady is she is not doing any book interviews at all. I didnt get to talk to her about this but when the article came out, her husbands press secretary was asked about it and said she sounded fascinating. I know her family finds it fascinat