The recent passing of former President Jimmy Carter has brought renewed attention to his shared ancestry with Motown Founder Berry Gordy.
Carter, the 39th president of the United States, died on Dec. 29 at 100. Before his passing, his son, Jeff Carter, released a detailed family history that traced their lineage back to cotton planters, Quakers, a spy for George Washington at Valley Forge, and a 19th-century plantation owner who happens to be Berry Gordy’s great-grandfather, the New York Times reports.
His shared ancestry with Berry Gordy, 95, highlights the painful history of slavery when enslaved Black women were often forced into relationships with their enslavers. This tragic practice connects Carter and Gordy through James Thomas Gordy, a white plantation owner in 19th-century Georgia, who fathered a child with a woman he enslaved.
That child, born around 1854, was named Berry Gordy, the grandfather of Motown music legend Berry Gordy Jr. Through the children James Thomas Gordy had with his wife, he also became the grandfather of President Carter’s mother, Lillian Gordy.
While no genealogical documentation, such as census records and slave schedules, exists to prove this blood relation, Gordy has recalled discussing the shared ancestry with the former president during Carter’s re-election campaign.
“In 1978, my sister Esther commissioned a research institute to verify the Gordy family tree,” Gordy told the New York Times in a statement.
“You can imagine the shock and pride I felt when I discovered that President Jimmy Carter and I were actually third cousins. We had such fun discussing this in 1980 at a Democratic fund-raiser in Los Angeles. From that point on, we started calling each other ‘cuz.’”
Jeff Carter, who researched the 216-page book Ancestors of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter (2012), partly using the Georgia State Archives, shared that his father had confirmed the family ties to Berry Gordy before his passing.
“When I found out about it, I asked Dad. He said, ‘Yeah, they all knew about it.’ It wasn’t a secret,” Jeff Carter said.
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