Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke acknowledged Sunday that his ancestors, as well as his wife Amy’s, had owned slaves. O’Rourke wrote in a post on Medium that his paternal great-great-great grandfather enslaved two women in the 1850s. His maternal great-great-great grandfather, he added, “most likely” also owned slaves. “I benefit from a system that my ancestors built to favor themselves at the expense of others,” O’Rourke wrote in the post. “That only increases the urgency I feel to help change this country so that it works for those who have been locked-out of — or locked-up in — this system.”

Something that we've been talking about in town hall meetings -- the legacy of slavery in the United States -- now has a much more personal connection. I was recently given documents showing that both Amy and I are descended from people who owned slaves. https://t.co/rGKKLqcoKf — Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) July 15, 2019

O’Rourke’s disclosure was made shortly before the publication of a report in The Guardian that detailed the former Texas congressman’s slave-owning ancestry. Genealogy website Ancestry.com has “abundant documentation” of O’Rourke’s and his wife’s ancestors’ slave owning and their support for the Confederacy, The Guardian reported, noting that O’Rourke is listed as a member of the site. Andrew Jasper, O’Rourke’s paternal great-great-great grandfather, enslaved two women named Eliza and Rose, both of whom were auctioned off in a “crying sale” after Jasper died, the report said. Amy O’Rourke’s family had also owned several slaves, including ”‘one negro man called Peter,’ ‘a boy called Darsy,’ ‘a girl called Sally,’ a ‘negro man called Ned’ and ‘one other called Moses,’” the report added, citing a 1798 probate record. O’Rourke told the outlet that he and his wife had known “nothing” about their families’ slave-owning past, and had been deeply troubled by the revelation. “Amy and I sat down and talked through this,” O’Rourke said. “How Andrew was able, through his descendants, to pass on the benefits of owning other human beings. And ultimately I and my children are beneficiaries of that.”

Beto O'Rourke's ancestors were slaveholders, records reveal https://t.co/fFZ4cbq3V8 — The Guardian (@guardian) July 15, 2019