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eighty were free citizens. It's also known that some of the Jewish people in South Carolina had children with Native Americans. One of these children may have then formed a family with an African American woman and given her his name. But these aren't the most likely possibilities.
    Some of the Cohens owned slaves. Rosa Ellen was likely descended from a relationship between slave and owner. Michelle and the rest of her family believe there is at least one slave owner in her family tree.
    This subject isn't spoken about openly in every family. It leads to uncomfortable questions that are difficult to answer: Would the slave have chosen this relationship? Was the slave too frightened to refuse? Even if the relationship had been a loving one, those partnerships were never equal: If trouble arose, one partner had legal rights and the other had none. But a belief about a slave owner in the family isn't passed down lightly, even if it's passed down by whispers.
    Michelle, as usual, is open and direct about this. As she explained to the
Washington Post
, "A lot of times these stories get buried, because sometimes the pain of them makes it hard to want to remember," she said. "You've got to be able to acknowledge and understand the past and move on from it. You have to understand it, and I think a lot of us just don't have an opportunity to understand it. But it's there." Barack stated the family belief directly in his speech about race in America, "A More Perfect Union," given during the 2008 primary campaign: "I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slave owners."
    If we do eventually confirm that Michelle has such an ancestor, as we probably will, we may still be surprised by the full story. Some of these relationships were more complicated than they first appear. Because the slavery laws in South Carolina made it almost impossible for some owners to free their slaves, some free citizens were married in every way but legally to spouses who were, by law, still slaves. But stories like these are exceptions.
    Michelle is focused on the positive. "An important message in this journey is that we're all linked," Michelle told the
Post.
"Somewhere there was a slave owner—or a white family in my great-grandfather's time that gave him a place, a home, that helped him build a life—that again led to me. So who were those people? I would argue they're just as much a part of my history as my great-grandfather."
    Her family story, she said, is like many others. "There are probably thousands of one-armed Frasers, all over this country, who, out of slavery and emancipation, because they were smart and worked hard, those American values, were able to lift themselves up." Yet when she finally learned the story as an adult, it also explained to her a lot about her own life. "It makes more sense to me," she said, "if the patriarch in our lineage was one-armed Fraser, a shoemaker with one arm, an entrepreneur, someone who was able to own property, and with sheer effort and determination was able to build a life in this town. That must have been the messages that my grandfather got."
    She could have added: And what he passed down.

3. CLASS ACT
    September, 1977: Michelle's first day of high school. This isn't just around the corner, like Bryn Mawr elementary. Michelle's not going to the local high school. To get here, she has traveled an hour and a half on two city buses. Now the thirteen-year-old is in a part of the Chicago that seems to have more warehouses than homes.
    She chose this for herself. Her brother isn't going to the local high school, so why should she?
MAGNET AND STEEL
    Craig attended Mount Carmel, a private boys' school. It was smaller than the local school, and tougher academically. It also had a great sports program. NFL star Donovan McNabb attended Mount Carmel in the 1990s, helping the team win a state championship. Antoine Walker of the NBA is another graduate. It was the perfect