Throughout his long tenure as a civil rights leader, the Rev. Jesse Jackson has had a lot of tough rows to hoe.
It turns out his ancestors did too. Literally.
During a power luncheon at N’Digo magazine in the West Loop this week, it was
revealed that Jackson’s lineage stretches back to the Mende farmers of Sierra
Leone in West Africa.
Dr. Rick A. Kittles, an associate professor of genetic medicine at the
University of Chicago, traced Jackson’s ancestry.
The testing that Kittles and his colleagues do is “important for everybody,
whether you’re a celebrity or not,” Kittles said. “When you say, ‘I might have
diabetes,’ the first thing [a doctor] says is, ‘Do you have a family history?’
So it’s important to understand your ancestry for many other reasons besides
setting up some map of Africa and saying, ‘This is where I’m from.’ ”
For $300 to $350, Kittles’ five-year-old company, African Ancestry, will
analyze anyone’s maternal or paternal DNA and pinpoint their African roots —
with a high degree of accuracy, he claimed — in four to six weeks.
Aside from Jackson, high-profile people who’ve submitted to swabbing include
Oprah Winfrey and music industry titan Quincy Jones. They explored their origins
on the 2006 PBS miniseries “African-American Lives.”
Aside from Jackson, N’Digo’s group included eight other Chicago movers and
shakers ranging from business barons and academics to broadcasters and
politicians.
According to N’Digo founder Hermene Hartman, Illinois Senate President Emil
Jones Jr. was amused to learn that his roots were European. “I called him
yesterday,” she told the crowd. “Emil started laughing and said, ‘I knew I was a
white man!’ ”
Part-time Chicago resident and financial industry CEO Chris Gardner was moved
when he learned of his ties to the Mende group of Sierra Leone — so moved that
he plans to jet back to the motherland this year. Gardner, a self-made
multimillionaire, was played by actor Will Smith in the 2006 film “The Pursuit
of Happyness.”
“Can you imagine for a second Alex Haley — had he had access to this kind of
technology when he was writing Roots 30 years ago — he could have just gotten on
a plane and said, ‘Hey, Mr. Kinte, we’re relatives,’ ” Gardner said.
Kittles has tested about 15,000 people since starting his studies in 1995.
U.
of C. prof helps trace African-American ancestry :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro
& Tri-State
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