Inside former President Jimmy Carter’s shared ancestry with Motown Founder Berry Gordy.
The recent passing of former President Jimmy Carter has brought renewed attention to his shared ancestry with Motown Founder Berry Gordy.
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.
“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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Source: Black Enterprise
