U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made clear he opposes government reparations for descendants of slaves, yet he himself is the descendent of slave owners.
“McConnell has opposed paying reparations to descendants of slaves, though census records show his family, like many others, benefited from their labor,” Corky Siemaszko and Helen Kwong report at NBC News in a lengthy article, published Monday.
James McConnell and Richard Daley, two of McConnell’s great grandfathers, owned at least 14 slaves when they lived in Limestone County, Alabama, and “all but two of them were female, according to the county ‘Slave Schedules’ in the 1850 and 1860 censuses.”
Just weeks ago McConnell, who is the longest-serving Republican Senate Leader in history, flippantly dismissed the idea of reparations.
“I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, when none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea,” the career Kentucky Republican said June 18. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We’ve elected an African American president.”
Watch:
Read the full report here.
(Editor’s note: NCRM recognizes that slaves are people and people cannot be owned, but we’re unable to find a more accurate term that is commonly used.)