[sgtbono2002]

***** James Sullivan, a senior, learned that his maternal family descends from the Ibo tribe in Nigeria, and that his ancestors came to the United States as slaves. *****

Most blacks in this country have DNA from a lot of sources. few are pure African Negroes. Did the test tell this kid that perhaps he has some of Thomas Jeffersons blood or was any strain of white DNA left out of the report?.

[Verginius Rufus]

It sounds like they were testing his mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to child. The mixed-race babies born during slavery had white fathers and black mothers so even a black American with a lot of European ancestry could easily have an unbroken mDNA lineage going to Africa. But there were also some American Indian women who were enslaved so in some cases the mDNA could trace back to an Indian tribe.

Apparently there are some French colonial records in Louisiana which identify slaves by their tribal origin.