When American Robert Prevost became Pope, naming himself Leo XIV, a firestorm of controversy was set off because of his Black relatives on his mother’s side. Both his maternal grandparents, Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié, are described as Black or mulatto in several census documents.
This wouldn’t be shocking to anyone researching their genealogy through DNA testing. Most individuals have mixed heritage and a little Black blood in their veins, especially in a family with deep roots in Chicago and New Orleans. I have a great uncle who passed for white in the Chicago area and lost touch, or purposely kept out of touch with the rest of our family. His descendants, whether they know it or not, have Black blood.
While I couldn’t see any Black features in Joseph Martinez, I could easily tell that Louise Baquié was descended from Africans. Joseph was born in Haiti, with a large population of light-skinned Black people, and Louise was born in New Orleans. On the 1900 census, while his family lived in New Orleans, Leo XIV’s maternal grandparents and his aunts — Irma and Margaret — were identified as Black. However, in 1920, after the family migrated to Chicago and had the Pope’s mother, Mildred, that decade’s census reflected their race as white.
In many parts of America, whether one was Black or not depended on what percentage of Black one was. While the “one-drop rule” is thought to have been widespread. In several states, percentages differed, depending in some cases on whether the child was born to a slave or a free person.
Thomas Jefferson had six children with the enslaved Sally Hemings. Sally was a quadroon, her slave grandmother having been raped by John Hemings, and her mother then raped by Jefferson’s first wife’s father, John Wayles. Sally’s children were 1/8th Black and would have been free by Virginia law had Sally not herself been enslaved.
Many of the “one-drop rules” were more social and not enacted into law until the 1900s, coinciding with the second wave of the Ku Klux Klan. Tennessee adopted a one-drop statute in 1910, and in Virginia, under the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. Earlier attempts to enact one-drop laws had failed, legislators realizing they might be found out to have Black ancestors.
"It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention," said George D. Tillman. "Every member has in him a certain mixture of … colored blood …. It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open to scandal, malice, and greed."
In Louisiana, home to Pope Leo’s grandparents, there was a caste system among Creoles, separating them from dark-skinned Blacks. Creoles were often used to keep control over other Black people; many Creoles didn’t consider themself Black.
Pope Leo XIV isn’t the first influential American thought to have Black Blood. Questions have been raised about six U.S. Presidents. Accusations were hurled by political opponents of Thomas Jefferson, saying his mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, was of mixed race. Andrew Jackson’s mother was called a prostitute who married a Black man. It has been suggested that Abraham Lincoln’s parents had Black heritage. Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Dwight Eisenhower denied Black roots, though Harding acknowledged the possibility in an interview with James Faulkner.
“How do I know, Jim?" said Harding. "One of my ancestors may have jumped the fence.”
It shouldn’t matter that Robert Prevost has Black relatives in his family, but it seems to be one more reason for his political foes to condemn him. Rod Dreher, a Louisiana native and editor-at-large with The American Conservative, called the new Pope a “Black Cajun” from New Orleans. How long before he’s called the “DEI Pope” or that we hear his grandfather was from a “shithole country?” Pope Leo has already proved the ire of the MAGA crowd based on previous criticisms of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, their immigration policy in particular. Once they find out he’s even a little bit Black, we’re sure to hear about it.
This post originally appeared on Medium and is edited and republished with author's permission. Read more of William Spivey's work on Medium. And if you dig his words, buy the man a coffee.