Kamala Harris’ Ancestor Was One of Ireland’s Most Notorious Slave Owners
Kamala Harris is said to have descended from brutal slaver Harrison Brown who moved from Northern Ireland to Jamaica.
Aug. 29 2024, Published 2:00 p.m. ET
Kamala Harris is facing claims she’s descended from a brutal slaver who owned more than 120 workers, ran a Jamaican plantation and fought against the abolition of the abhorrent trade.
RadarOnline.com can reveal the allegation is being made by a British historian about the Democrat US president wannabe, 59, who is of Indian and Afro-Jamaican descent – with her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, born in Madras, and her father Donald Harris from Jamaica.
It comes after Vice President Harris’ father – an 85-year-old Stanford University academic – said he was born in Brown’s Town on the Caribbean island, which was named after Hamilton Brown.
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Vice President Harris’ father Donald Harris was born and raised in Brown’s Town, Jamaica.
Brown is the slaver who has been named by a British historian as Harris’ slave-owning great-great-great-great grandfather.
In an article published by the Jamaica Globe, Harris’ dad Professor Harris wrote: “My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown) descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slaveowner and founder of Brown’s Town, a town in Jamaica.”
Northern Irish-born historian Stephen McCracken claims Brown was a “notorious” slaver and a “seriously bad man” who was born in County Antrim before he settled in Jamaica.
He said: “I actually thought this was going to be a nice story, like (former US presidents) McKinley, Nixon, Jackson, Roosevelt, all of whom have links to Antrim, but it wasn’t.
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“Seriously bad man” Brown is said to be Harris’ great-great-great-great grandfather.
“Hamilton Brown was not a nice fellow. He was born in Antrim, Northern Ireland, before moving to Jamaica as a teenager. There, he became a bookmaker, and eventually a plantation owner and slaveholder.”
The historian added Brown was notorious for his resistance to ending the horrific practice of slavery, saying: “He was a seriously bad man, who traveled to London a few times to protest against the abolition of slavery.”
He went on about the slaver: “When slavery was finally outlawed, he turned his attention to exploiting Irish migrants, effectively making slaves of them too.”
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Brown’s grim legacy is a far cry from the civil rights-campaigning image Harris has carved for herself throughout her career.
Despite her meteoric rise from the legal world and into politics, Harris has never publicly addressed the dark chapter in her family’s history.
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Brown is said to have turned his attention to exploiting Irish migrants after slavery was finally abolished.
It’s not uncommon for African Americans and those of Caribbean heritage to have ancestors who were both slaves and slavers – and the horrific reality of the trade often meant slave masters would father children with enslaved women.
Despite McCracken’s claims, a genealogist who discovered the Irish ancestors of Joe Biden and Barack Obama says she can’t find any record Harris is descended from Brown.
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Megan Smolenyak, who worked on the celebrity heritage series Who Do You Think You Are? has branded the alleged link as part of “twisted attempts” to “weaponize Kamala Harris’ family tree”.
She said about failing to find any records proving a family connection between the Democrat and Irish slave owner: “(Brown) was really aggressive about fighting emancipation and that puts him in his own special category.
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“Although I can’t prove it, I have very few doubts that he did rape some of those he enslaved.
“No doubt, unfortunately, his DNA is floating out there but it’s one thing to know that on an intellectual level and to claim it with regard to somebody who might become the next president of the United States. There is no paper-trail proof at all.”
Harris’ politics were shaped by her activist mother and her time at Howard University – often referred to as the ‘Black Harvard’ – and she has shattered glass ceilings throughout her career, becoming the first Black, Asian, and female vice president in US history.
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