Kamala Harris' great-great-great-great grandfather was 'notorious' Irish slave owner who bought Jamaican plantation and travelled to London to fight abolition, historian claims

July 23, 2024

Kamala Harris is descended from an owner of 120-plus slaves who ran a Jamaican plantation and fought against the abolition of the abhorrent trade, a British historian claimed today.

The Democrat would-be President is of Indian and Afro-Jamaican descent with her late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, born in Madras, now Chennai, while her father, Donald Harris, is from Jamaica.

The Vice-President's father, a Stanford University academic who is 85, was born in Brown's Town on the Caribbean island – named after Hamilton Brown, who is believed to be Kamala's slave-owning great-great-great-great grandfather.

In an article published by the Jamaica Globe in 2019, Kamala's father Professor Harris wrote: 'My roots go back, within my lifetime, to my paternal grandmother Miss Chrishy (née Christiana Brown) descendant of Hamilton Brown who is on record as plantation and slave owner and founder of Brown's Town, a town in Jamaica.'

Northern Irish historian Stephen McCracken said today that Brown was a 'notorious' slaver and 'not nice fellow' who was born in Antrim but later settled in Jamaica.

'I actually thought this was going to be a nice story, like (former US presidents) McKinley, Nixon, Jackson, Roosevelt, all of whom have links to Antrim, but it wasn’t', he said.

Donald Harris holds his daughter, Kamala, in 1965. Professor Harris has spoken about their family history and believes they are related to Hamilton Brown, a notorious slaver and plantation owner

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Donald Harris holds his daughter, Kamala, in 1965. Professor Harris has spoken about their family history and believes they are related to Hamilton Brown, a notorious slaver and plantation owner

Iris Finegan holds her great granddaughter, Kamala Harris, in Jamaica. Iris was a farmer and educator known as 'Miss Iris' in the family

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Iris Finegan holds her great granddaughter, Kamala Harris, in Jamaica. Iris was a farmer and educator known as 'Miss Iris' in the family

A plantation in Saint Ann Parish, where ancestor Hamilton Brown settled from Northern Ireland. Kamala's father grew up in the same area of Jamaica

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A plantation in Saint Ann Parish, where ancestor Hamilton Brown settled from Northern Ireland. Kamala's father grew up in the same area of Jamaica

Brown travelled to London to protest against the abolition of slavery and then turned his attention to Irish migrants when he was no longer allowed to enslave Africans, Mr McCracken told the Belfast Telegraph.

Mr McCracken has examined Kamala’s UK roots after it was discovered she has ancestry in Co Antrim through Hamilton Brown.

'Hamilton Brown was a notorious figure, and not a nice fellow,' he said.

'Hamilton was born in Antrim, just north of Ballymoney, before he moved to Jamaica as a teenager. That's where he became a bookmaker, and then a plantation owner, and therefore a slave owner.

'His gravestone is in Saint Ann in Jamaica, which lists his birthplace as Antrim.

'He had numerous slaves, in fact Hamilton Brown routinely travelled back and forth to London to protest the abolishment of slavery.

'He would come back to Ireland to take migrants back to Jamaica to work once slavery was abolished. A quote refers to him as "making slaves of migrants" in Ireland.'

In 2019, it was reported that Brown owned at least 121 slaves in 1826.

Kamala is not believed to have spoken publicly about these roots, which take her all the way back to the UK. Reuters fact checkers have said that Kamala is likely to be a descendant of both slaves and slave owners.

It is not uncommon for African Americans or people of Caribbean heritage to be descended from a slave owners. This is because it was common for slave masters to rape their female slaves.

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, yesterday

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US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks at her campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, yesterday

If Kamala manages to beat Donald Trump and is elected in November, Kamala will become the latest US president to have links to Ireland.

Mr Biden is very proud of his own Irish heritage, with links to Mayo and Louth.

'Hamilton was born in Antrim, just north of Ballymoney, before he moved to Jamaica as a teenager. That's where he became a bookmaker, and then a plantation owner, and therefore a slave owner.

'His gravestone is in Saint Ann in Jamaica, which lists his birthplace as Antrim.

'He had numerous slaves, in fact Hamilton Brown routinely travelled back and forth to London to protest the abolishment of slavery'.

He told the Belfast Telegraph: 'He would come back to Ireland to take migrants back to Jamaica to work once slavery was abolished. A quote refers to him as "making slaves of migrants" in Ireland.'

In 2019, it was reported that Brown owned at least 121 slaves in 1826, respectively.

Kamala is not believed to have spoken publicly about these roots, which take her all the way back to the UK. Reuters fact checkers have said that Kamala is likely to be a descendant of both slaves and slave owners.

Kamala's own story is equally extraordinary. She rose to Vice-President after being California's attorney general and a US senator having originally been a local prosecutor in Alameda County, California, in the early 1990s.

Just like her boss Joe Biden, Kamala Harris is also known for gaffes and 'word salad' speeches.

From describing AI as a 'kind of a fancy thing' that is 'first of all two letters' to a recent baffling blunder where she called the 2024 election 'the most election of our lifetime', the vice-president's abilities as an orator have long been in question.

She also once confused North and South Korea, mistakenly said 220million Americans died of Covid-19 and joked that people aged between 18 and 24 are 'really stupid'.

And the 59-year-old also has a reputation for badly misjudging a social situation and laughing at the wrong moment, including once when she was asked a question about the fate of desperate Ukrainian refugees.

Ms Harris is happily married to LA lawyer Doug Emhoff but there are also claims that her affair with flamboyant California Democrat and San Francisco's first black mayor Willie Brown in the 1990s - when he was 61 and she was 31 - also gave the presidential hopeful's career the boost she needed to get to where she is today.

'Yes, I may have influenced her career by appointing her to two state commissions when I was Assembly speaker. And I certainly helped with her first race for district attorney in San Francisco', Brown said in 2019 at the ripe age of 86.

In 2001 she briefly dated American talk show host Montel Williams. Today he didn't endorse Kamala Harris for President after Mr Biden dropped out. Instead he backed Wes Moore, who has since endorsed Vice President Harris.