Written by Dr. Gail Dawson, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC)

Last week in class, a student commented about being the descendant of “lesser people.” I thought it was an interesting comment partially because I have never considered my ancestors to be “lesser” and I really couldn’t understand why anyone else would think that way of theirs. I also, somewhat jokingly, wondered which of this student’s ancestors was “lesser.” Not knowing the student’s ancestry or daring to speculate, I decided to consider my own ancestry. According to the DNA testing I had done last year, I am 76% sub-Saharan African, 18% European, and 6% Native American which in my test actually shows up as East Asian. So, I asked myself which of my ancestors could be considered “lesser people.”

I don’t consider my African Ancestors to be lesser. They were stolen from their native land, forced into slavery, beaten and abused yet they had the strength to survive and overcome such treatment. Some of them even found ways to excel. For example, my great grandfather, Presley Dorsey/Dawson, a free person of color who served in the Civil War and shortly there after managed to purchase the farm on which my father was raised from Charles and Samuel Walls, the previous owners of his wife Mary Jane Benton. Another great grandfather, Frederick Shaw, the son of an African slave and a Native American woman, was sold into slavery and later served as a soldier in the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War. During slavery, Frederick was used as a breeder and since the slaves used as breeders were usually the biggest, strongest, and hardest working, I don’t think he could be considered lesser.

Other ancestors managed to survive slavery or somehow gained their freedom prior to the Civil War. Rhoda Murray, my great-great-great grandmother shows up in the 1840 census as a free person of color. Similarly, Susan Woodland, my great-great grandmother, and her mother Julia Woodland can be found in the 1850 census as free people of color. Although I don’t know the circumstances surrounding their freedom, the mere fact that these three women were free and listed as the heads of their households at that time in history attests to the fact that they should not be considered “lesser people.” Likewise, I cannot consider my Native American ancestors to be “lesser people” although I have no indication of which tribe(s) they belonged. I only know that my great grandfather was born to a Native American woman somewhere in North Carolina around 1830.

As for my European ancestors, I have even less to go on. Knowing the history of our country, I can say that it is very likely that they were slave-owners or overseers who felt justified in raping young slave women, though. Even with this speculation, I still cannot consider them to be “lesser people” – cruel, ignorant, immoral, misguided . . . perhaps, but I don’t think they were “lesser.” I guess I can’t bring myself to consider them lesser because I don’t think any race of people is any less than another or maybe it is simply because each of my ancestors contributed to making me the person that I am. For that reason alone, I cannot consider any of them to be “lesser people.”