Just for the record, only a small fraction of them were due to sexual relations between white slave owners and black slaves, although the presence of such matches is not uncommon somewhere in the family tree due to the doubling of potential ancestors in each generation back.
The majority of them opted for names of famous people in lieu of taking the surname of their former owners shortly after slavery ended in 1865. Booker T. Washington, in his epic autobiography Up From Slavery discusses this in depth.
Ironically, the one thing the more ambitious of these newly freed slaves sought was education. Look up the Niagara Movement and establishment of ad hoc schools such as the one in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, which birthed the NAACP. The leftwing leadership of today would have been disowned by the founders of their movements who, against all odds, were successful in promoting the same education in white man's world which is ridiculed by the leftwing leadership of today.
I understand the historical implications, but doesn’t it strike you as peculiar that entire generations of freedmen decided to take the family name of a man who would see them enslaved for a thousand years if he could (Jackson)?
I went through the cultural sensitivity training stuff as an undergrad in college. We were forced to take several “multicultural” courses focusing on black history or women’s suffrage. To be honest, I became enamored by black history and very much enjoyed reading about our nation’s history through that lens. It truly gives one a different perspective about life in early America, but I would constantly strike up arguments and receive looks of disgust in class when I would bring up facts such as blacks actually being better off here in America as slaves.
The people left behind in present-day Cote d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Ghana were treated far beyond inhumanely. Here in the US, blacks were given shelter, food, clothes, and were at least treated as human. Yes, I understand that they were often abused, the women raped, etc., but compared to life in sub-Saharan Africa, they had it good. And now, the ancestors of those slaves are living high on the hog here in the US, most of them, at the least, getting three-hots-and-a-cot in the local lockup or funneling off of my tax dollars through Medicare, WIC, or any of the multitude of programs available to unwed black mothers who find it difficult to discontinue reproduction.
To have Chris Rock, a millionaire, denigrate the United States is, to me, the ultimate insult and worthy of a derisive sneer since, in all likelihood, his parents and those before them fought a very difficult battle in the 1950s for their freedom that is no taken for granted by Rock and the other idiot celebritards out there who find America so repulsive simply because of her past and not great for how far she’s come.