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sunflowerwinds · 2 months ago

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realizations | e.w

summary: the campfire causes a tension between you and abby. aquarium day causes you to be honest with how you feel about either girls.

pairing: ellie williams x fem!reader

word count: 3.7K

contains: mature language, joel supremacy, ellie being the cutest there is, reader again being so indecisive (last time i swear), more inaccurate portrayals of camps but this is MY story :)

a/n: school has been kicking my ass already. i cranked this out for you lovelies <3 i hope all of you enjoy!!!

under the summer starts masterlist

Approaching the circle of kids around the campfire, Jesse was hovering over a few kids to make sure they were a reasonable distance from the flames, Steve and Robin were messily hounding down an extra-large s’more concoction, Abby carefully helping a few kids with the placement of their marshmallows, Ellie strumming away at her guitar singing ‘Black Bird’ and Dina softly humming along with some of her kids was a sight to behold. You even spotted a bunch of the campers with smears of chocolate and melted marshmallows on their cheeks and chins.

You had told Joel that you were going to be taking a ‘nap’ so that he could watch over your kids for a bit. In reality, you had just wanted some secluded alone time with your phone; texting your anxious dads that you were in fact not dead. You had a comfortable thin sweater over your tank top, the neckline slightly hanging off of your shoulder. You made eye contact with a soft singing Ellie and her lips stretched into a small smile.

You couldn’t believe that you were even considering yearning for Ellie for another summer or letting yourself find comfort in Abby.

What snapped you out of it was Abby, waving you over to the space next to her on the log. You send her a small smile at the tall blonde, making your way over. Your tennis shoes crunch under the twigs and fallen leaves as you clasp your hands behind your back.

“Wow, you kept your promise.” You tease as you seat yourself next to her.

Abby chuckled and shrugged her shoulders. “I’m very trustworthy.”

“Well, now I know. I’m still holding you for helping me prank Ellie later.” You point a finger at her accusingly.

Abby held one of her fingers in front of her mouth as she glanced around at the campers.

“Don’t mention the ‘p’ word. We don’t want to have another ‘bubbles’ incident.” Abby lightly chuckled.

You wince as you know she was right. As far as you could tell, the campers weren’t even close to thinking about pulling a prank. Well, not close to pulling a prank on you which you could live with. If it was any of the boys, you could definitely live with that.

“Can I ask you something?” Abby whispers.

You try to ignore Ellie’s singing to tune into what Abby is about to say.

“Yeah, what’s up?” You grin kindly.

“I don’t want to make assumptions or read into anything but,” Abby sucked in a deep breath, scratching at the back of her neck. “Is there… anything at all going on between you and Ellie?”

You froze your itching at your sleeve, every muscle in your body becoming tighter.

“Not that I know of,” you joke, trying to recover from how tense you got.

Abby weakly chuckled. “Right, yeah. I don’t know. I just assumed if you guys really aren’t, can I take you somewhere when the kids leave for the weekend to get more clothes? You don’t have to but I don’t know. I feel like you’ve been… hitting on me?”

Was she really doing this right now? You don’t deny the flirting but why didn’t she ask you once you two were alone?

“Can I think about it?” You respond quickly.

Abby noticeably falters at your unsure response but attempts to her disappointment. You swore you saw a slight twitch in her eyebrow.

“Yeah, of course.”

Before you could formulate an apology, Ellie finished up Black Bird and looked around with a sheepish grin as everyone clapped and cheered. Robin and you snapped your fingers as if you were at a poetry slam, cheeky grins on your faces.

“Sing ‘Time In A Bottle’” Dina suggests, glancing over at you.

You agree as that song is so beautiful to you. Dina knew this as did everyone you ever had the opportunity to speak to. Ellie’s eyes, too, pointed at you. She shakes her head playfully as she clears her throat, adjusting the guitar strings a bit.

“Okay everybody, this is the last song of the night then it’s straight to bed.” Joel walked around the large circle, making sure every child heard his words.

There were a few whines of ‘no’ and ‘just a few more songs’ but the stubborn man put his foot down. Ellie told them all that she was going to be playing again in two nights so she’ll play more songs then. They all seemed to agree for the most part. You clasped your hands together, leaning forward on your elbows and resting them on your upper thighs. The nails of your thumbs brushed past your bottom lip as you listened to the soft strum of the acoustic.

Every lyric settled into your chest as Ellie repeatedly made sure your attention was on her. Her eyes were focused on you, only leaving yours for a few seconds at a time through the duration of the gentle song. It was clear that the tune had romantic undertones which had you more than overwhelmed at her intense eye contact. It didn’t help that Abby’s larger shoulder was pressing into your own, the contact not helping with your nerves.

Were they aware that there were kids around?

The night ended with a final strum of her guitar, blinking out of the trance her voice put you in. Everyone clapped and attempted for the second time to convince Joel to let them stay up a bit longer but he wouldn’t budge.

“No, no more whining ev’rybody. Time to hit the hay,” Joel shook his head and motioned for all the campers to stand up.

With shuffles of tennis shoes on the grass and dirt, you, too, stood up on your feet, wiping your sweaty palms on your shorts. You made your way over to Ellie carefully adjusting the strings of the guitar. She glanced up at you for a second, smiling small. You had missed Abby’s longing gaze before following her campers back to their cabin, too distracted by the auburn-haired girl to notice the blonde.

“Hey, did you like the song?” Ellie questioned knowingly.

“Eh, a little pitchy at some parts,” you jokingly critique.

“I never said I was a professional singer,” Ellie was quick to snap back, clearing her throat. “You, uh, excited for tomorrow?”

You nod as you had already forgotten that tomorrow the camp was going on a tour of an aquarium that was about an hour away from camp. You were a bit of a fanatic of the butterfly exhibit and Ellie knew this. She got a photo of you on the Polaroid every year beaming at the fluttering insects.

“I am, yeah.”

You knew you were beaming after your response, clasping your hands behind your back and practically bouncing on the soles of your feet.

“It’s very… fitting, you know?” Ellie added with a small grin on her face.

You furrow your brows at her words.

“What is?” You question.

“You loving the aquarium. It’s very princess-like of you,” Ellie added but she avoided your gaze, feeling ashamed to admit that.

“Wow. Princess-like?” You sarcastically quipped before Ellie started letting out a string of ‘neverminds’.

“Forget I even said anything,” Ellie rushed out, standing up from the log to grab the pail of water that the camp used to put out the fire.

You reached for her arm as she carefully poured the lake water over the logs, dampening them and watching the fire die down slowly. Now only a porch light from a cabin and the beautiful moon lit up your faces. Your fingers lightly grip onto her wrist to tug her towards you.

“I thought it was sweet.” You say seriously, hoping she wouldn’t refrain from cute compliments anymore.

Not to sound like a conceited bitch but you soared through the sky when you got compliments, especially from Ellie.

“Well, I can’t help the truth,” Ellie slyly states.

You pressed your lips into a thin line, watching Ellie kick up the dirt from underneath the grass. Ellie could be cocky, a little irritating but when she got like this, it made you feel like maybe your crush on her is reciprocated.

“You want to partner up tomorrow?” You offer, releasing her wrist and fiddling with your sleeves.

Ellie, finally, turned her neck to look you in your eyes, eyebrows shooting up. Joel usually randomly chose partners but you were going to ask him right after this if he could make an exception just this once.

“Yeah. I’d like that,” her smile widened ever so slightly, one of her hands grasping onto the strap of the guitar.

“Okay, cool,” you let out a smitten chuckle, rocking on your heels.

A couple of crickets chirped in the unseen of the grass, causing you to snap out of your weird behavior.

“I gotta go and put the guitar up in the arts cabin but I’ll see you first thing tomorrow, okay?” Ellie double-checked with you, grinning adorably.

“Bright and early, Els,” you confirmed.

Ellie gave you one last nod before trudging in the distance to the cabin. You let out a breath before practically sprinting off to the complete opposite side of the camp to the main office where Joel usually would be at this time of night, prepping for the next day. You run up the wooden steps to the front door, raising your fist to knock on the screen door.

You hear a muffled ‘come in’, pulling the screen the door open to open the beaten down wooden door. There Joel was sitting at a desk with a pair of thin glasses sitting on the bridge of his strong nose as he scribbled on sheets of paper. He looked up over the rim of the glasses, waiting for you to say something.

“Hi. I’m sorry to bother you right now but I have a question,” you cleared your throat, scratching at your arm.

“Is somethin’ wrong?” He questioned, setting his pencil down.

“No, um, everything is perfectly okay. I just have a favor to ask,” you awkwardly chuckled.

“Okay…” Joel sounded hesitant but urged you to just spit it out.

“If it's not too much trouble, could Ellie and I be paired up tomorrow for the aquarium?” You could feel your face heating up at how middle school this all felt.

Joel raised a brow at you before he picked his pencil back up and pointed the eraser end at where you were standing from across the table.

“Are you and Ellie datin’?”

Your eyes bugged out of your head before you shook your head slowly. What the hell?

“Really?” He pressed once more, seeming to not believe you.

“Yes, really,” you emphasized. Joel just stares at you without moving as you continue your explanation. “We just wanted to partner up and I was hoping you could make an exception. Do we seem like we’re together?”

At this point, Joel had his rough hands up in the air at your reaction to his question. You were, in your defense, becoming very defensive over the initial question.

“Alright, alright. I was just confused is all,” Joel shook his head.

“I just want to make it clear,” you add on before shutting your mouth.

“I know. I’ll… pair your groups up. No goofing around though.”

You nod to assure him even though you knew you and Ellie would be attached to the hip. You quietly thank him before leaving the cabin with one last ‘goodnight’ to Joel.

Hopping off of the suffocatingly humid bus, you took in the entrance of the aquarium with jittery excitement in your veins. You waited by the side of the bus for each of your campers to step down, holding a hand out for those who needed the support.

Once all of your friends and their campers got off the other buses, you had to round up your and Ellie’s group to get all of the all-day tour bracelets. It isn’t as packed as it was last summer but there was still a decent amount of families there to enjoy the experience of the aquatic life.

You wave sadly across the way to Robin and Steve who, to no surprise at all, were partnered up. Steve pretended to cry without your presence and you simply mouthed ‘dramatic’ before they disappeared into a different entrance to the aquarium.

“Okay everyone,” Ellie raised her voice. as she spoke to your mixed group of campers. “A few rules before we go in. One; please do not wander on your own. Two; if you need to use the bathroom, let either of us know and one of us will go with you to make sure you don’t get lost. Three; with the few cameras we were given, do not have the flash on because the animals are sensitive to them and we don’t want to hurt them, right?”

A string of ‘no Miss Ellie’ rang in the air which caused you to bite back a smile. Seeing her be such a natural leader made her weirdly more attractive to you.

“I didn’t think so. Let’s go inside everyone. Single file.”

Ellie’s own satisfied smile spread onto her face as she clapped her hands together before motioning everyone to follow the two of you. You nudged her with your shoulder with a small smile before standing back to walk behind the group to make sure no one wandered off.

As much as you wanted to be paired up, you sort of forgot how much time you weren’t going to spend with each other. It constantly left your mind that you were at a summer camp for children; not someplace to find a girlfriend.

It was interesting regardless of all of the facts about a variety of sea creatures. You felt like an impatient child wanting to get to the tour, fiddling with your camera. You watched as the kids all took turns using the camera to take photos of the stingrays before they fed them.

The excited gasps and squeals of the children made your heart grow tenfold as they dropped the food into the mouths of the stingrays.

“Guys, be careful, okay? Don’t put your hands all the way in, please.” You hurry out, anxiety flooding through your veins at how slightly careless they were being.

You didn’t want to have an incident like last summer when embarrassingly enough, you allowed a small boy to leave your eyeliner and he fell directly into the small pool. Thankfully, he wasn’t injured but his mother was not happy to hear this. You got screamed at by an angry mother when she was told by Joel about the accident. Of course, you took the blame but Steve had been your partner at the time and took the fall for you.

“Can I eat this?” A little girl with big hazel eyes asked you as she held up the stingray's food to you.

“Uh, no, sweetheart. That’s for the stingrays. It wouldn’t be tasty.” You shake your head.

The girl's smile falters as she glances at the food in her hand and then back up at you. She looked uneasy. It didn’t take long before it clicked in your head that she already had eaten a bit of it. You let out a soft sigh, bending down to her height.

“You already ate some, didn’t you?”

Ashamed, she slowly nods her head and avoids your gaze. You weren’t sure what would happen to her but you were assuming and hoping her body would reject it or she would just poop it out.

“Well, if you feel like you’re going to throw up or need to use the bathroom, let me or Miss Ellie know, okay?” You whisper to her, rubbing her back to ease her.

She nods one more time before walking back to the feeding area, giving the rest of the food to the awaiting animals. Ellie makes her way over to you, folding her arms and motioning to the sweet child.

“What happened?”

“She, uh, ate some of the stingray’s food.” You wince at your words.

Ellie’s eyebrows shoot up as she turns her head to stare at you with disbelief. She raises her palm over her mouth to hide her cheeky grin. You roll your eyes as you nudge her shoulder, quietly telling her to ‘shut up’. It had taken everything in you to not laugh initially when the poor girl had told you.

“You better hope we don’t have another insane mom on our hands when she finds out about this,” she teases with a soft grin.

“If you care about me, you’ll take the fall for me like Steve did last year,” you shrug your shoulders, keeping a good eye on the group.

There was a moment of silence that made you turn to Ellie. Her eyes were wide with admiration but she avoided your gaze like the plague when she realized that you were staring right back at her. A blooming fire rose to her pale freckled cheeks as she scratched behind her ear.

“I definitely care about you more than Steve does,” Ellie muttered angrily which caused you to giggle at her, leaning your head on her shoulder.

You were a fool not to notice her immediately tensing when you did so, side-eyeing the slope of your nose and the length of your lashes. Everything in you wanted to stand here forever, listening to the pattern of Ellie’s breathing.

“Is someone jealous?” You playfully tease.

Ellie scoffed before she confidently stated: “Yeah, I’m jealous of a guy who runs around in 3-inch inseam shorts and crop tops.”

“Hey, he’s bringing the 80’s fashion back and flawlessly.” You defend your friend.

Ellie paused for a moment before nodding slowly in agreement. As much as you did love Steve and who he is, you couldn’t even imagine being with him. Maybe if you were to get married when you both turned 40 and neither of you were with anyone but you were 99% sure he and Robin had already solidified that pact.

You could only imagine being with the freckled girl whose shoulder you're resting on. You have imagined it for the past three years. Quite vividly, you might add.

“C’mon. It’s time to move on to the smaller fishes,” Ellie leaned her head to yours, the skin of her cheek pressing up against your temple.

You hold back a disappointed sigh and lift your head from her clothed shoulder. After calling after the children one by one, name after name, everyone walked through a tunnel that was illuminated by a soft blue hue between the crevices of the dark walkway. The cylinder cases of fishes swimming freely amongst the probably fake coral and rocks.

You hear a few gasps as someone points out a clownfish and blue tang swimming amongst one another.

“It’s Marlin, Nemo, and Dory!” Beth exclaimed with a bright smile, pointing at the fish swimming above.

“They aren’t real. It’s from a movie,” Carter snarks, folding his pale arms across his chest.

Vanessa practically snapped her neck to give Carter a dirty look. “Umm, I see them right there.”

You pursed my lips to push back the laughter that was threatening to come out. Girlhood at its finest.

You, too, watched as they swam circles around one another, channeling their excitement for the fish. It didn’t take long before you heard a shutter come from next to you.

You side-eye the freckled girl and immediately tell her ‘no’.

“‘No’ what?” She questions as she is very openly holding up the film camera to you.

You hold back your eye roll before raising your brows at her: “‘No’ means ‘no photos’, Els.”

“But you look pretty,” was her only response back as she snapped another of you appearing rather smiley.

Who were you to blame for your cheeks hurting from the terrifying grin on your face? The girl you swore up and down that you were getting over.

“Just make sure you get my good side,” you give in embarrasingly easy.

“All of your sides are good. You’re the most annoyingly photogenic person I know,” Ellie teases, sounding pissed off but you knew the intent behind her words.

“It is really hard being perfect,” you sigh playfully.

“Yeah, yeah,” Ellie shook her head but didn’t stop with the photo-taking.

While you were having photos being taken non-stop, you thought about how exhilarating having Ellie praise you this way shamelessly. You also believed this was exactly why everyone thought the two of you were dating.

“Alright, enough. Your turn,” you reach for the camera but Ellie pulls back.

“Fuck no,” Ellie says quickly but covered her mouth to look at the children who were staring at the fish in awe.

“Fuck yes,” you repeat.

After a small struggle, you were able to pry the camera from Ellie’s hands to point the lens right at her blue-lit face. She immediately began to put her palms over the camera, pleading for you to not take the photos.

You couldn’t even understand why Ellie hated photos when she, too, was insanely photogenic.

“Let me take one. Please?” You aim the camera away from her face for a moment.

Ellie was clearly hesitant but the second she heard the ‘please’ come from your sweet lips, she knew she couldn’t say ‘no’ to you. She would do anything for that ‘please’.

“One.” She reaffirmed her statement, holding up her pointer finger.

“Just one. Maybe two,” you rushed out that last part of the sentence before aiming the lens at her.

Before Ellie could protest, you took a photo of the pretty freckled girl pointing at the fishes. Her jaw was tilted ever so slightly and her smile was small but she was a perfect vision. You needed this sight stamped permanently into your brain.

You knew you were telling Abby that you couldn’t go out with her. You were kidding yourself with Abby. She was more of a friend and you knew that now more than ever.

The only problem now was when the hell were you going to get the guts to tell her?

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#wlw #sapphic #ellie williams #ellie williams fanfic #ellie williams tlou2 #ellie williams x female reader #ellie williams x you #utss

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elliespassagerprincess · 1 year ago

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Douchebag Ellie supremacy!

Headcannons: douchebag!ellie x reader

☆ Douchebag Ellie who was the most hated girl on campus because she was literally a bitch.

☆ Douchebag Ellie was in the same class as you and who treated you like shit.

“I thought you were smart dude, I got higher than you”

☆ Douchebag Ellie who would yawn loudly as you try and present. Or she would literally just make random noises. She was trying to get under your skin.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who would boo every time your lecturer asked you to answer a question.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who bumps into you on purpose, making you drop your books and then she walks away laughing.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who would insult you on a daily basis, when in reality she was looking for ways to talk to you.

“You look fucking disgusting”

“you’re seriously going to wear that?”

“No wonder your ex cheated on you”

☆ Douchebag Ellie who thrives off the attention you give her when you yell at her. Or when you tell her to fuck off.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who sits directly behind you and throws notes at you and who thinks it’s funny when you flip her off.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who gets defensive when her friends say she has a crush on you.

“Dude you’re literally fucking in love with her! You already act like a dick in general but you act like a bigger one around her”

“Shut the fuck up Jesse, this is why Dina left you”

☆ Douchebag Ellie who watches you smile with other people but when it comes to her you walk past her. And as much as she likes to pretend it didn’t make her feeling anything, she felting something. It hurt.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who feels a pit grow in her stomach when she saw you walking hand in hand with another girl.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who knows it’s not normal to get jealous when you see someone you know walking with someone else.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who realizes she’s in love with you and that she’s fucked.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who becomes worse after that. Harsher insults and snarkier comments.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who’s mad at herself for not talking to you sooner.

“Dude it’s my fault” Ellie sighed one afternoon.

“if you weren’t such a pussy maybe you could talk to her and ask her out” Jesse spoke as he tried comforting his friend.

“she was so rude to that poor girl; I don’t even think she stood a chance” Dina added

☆ Douchebag Ellie who grew quiet and less bitchy.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who stopped making fun of you and completely distanced herself.

“Ellie are you ok?” her eyes snapped open she was met with the girl she was so deeply in love with.

“why do you fucking care?” Ellie snapped.

“I don’t” you answered. “it’s just you didn’t call me stupid of failing my test”

“well you aren’t stupid” Ellie muttered

“what?” You asked “I didn’t hear you”

“Nothing” Ellie muttered.

Ellie brought her hand up to her face as she rubbed her eyes and she let out a sigh. “Look- can I ask you something?” Ellie hesitantly asked.

“sure”

if I- if I wasn’t such a bitch would you like me? Like- you know.. like like me?” Ellie looked at you sheepishly.

“who says I don’t already?” Ellie started at you with wide eyes as you just winked at her,

“see in class Williams!” you said as you walked away

☆ Douchebag Ellie who got hope that she did actually have a change with you.

☆ Douchebag Ellie who made it her mission to make you hers from that day on.

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ausetkmt · 11 months ago

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https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-slavery-families/

Heirs of Power

The forebears of three members of Congress regained – and passed forward – wealth and power their families lost when slavery was abolished. Their success shows how the Southern elite exploited Black Americans in new ways.

About a month after the Civil War began, a slaveholding ancestor of current U.S. Congressman French Hill seemed confident about the future. “Lincoln can’t starve me out unless he takes my land and negros,” plantation owner Creed Taylor wrote to a relative.

By the time the war ended in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln had freed the enslaved, including at least 70 who worked Taylor’s cotton fields here. But Taylor’s family found a path back to prosperity that didn’t look much different from the way he had first made his fortune.

In May 1861, Creed Taylor wrote to his brother to explain his support of secession. Via Arkansas State Archives

Taylor still owned at least 1,500 acres of farmland. By the turn of the 20th century, his grandson oversaw a sprawling cotton operation that would eventually grow to more than 10 times the size of Taylor’s farm. And for years, the fields would be worked once again by Black people who didn’t have a choice.

Emancipation dealt many slaveholders a staggering economic blow, wiping out vast amounts of wealth across the South. In 1870, five years after the war ended and about 4 million Black people were freed from slavery, the states that once made up the Confederacy were enduring one of the largest wealth shocks in American history. The reported wealth of Southerners dropped by $4.3 billion, or about 65%, from a decade earlier, a Reuters analysis found. Put another way, war and emancipation appear to have erased about two-thirds of wealth in the South.

For this story, Reuters traveled to Arkansas and Georgia, and interviewed more than 20 experts on Southern history and economics. Journalists also used thousands of pages of newspaper accounts, census documents, court records, history books, family papers and other material to construct this story. The data analysis of the wealth shock in the South is based on a comparison of 1860 and 1870 census data from IPUMS.

Those who lost the most, like Congressman Hill’s direct ancestor, were the largest enslavers. They also had the clearest path to rebuilding – often by replicating elements of the slavery economy and reinstituting feudal systems that embraced white supremacy.

The Black people who had been enslaved emerged with far less. Racial violence and voting laws locked them out of political power. Schooling was limited, leaving most unable to read and write. The federal government let former slaveholders keep their land, and the newly freed were afforded few paths to prosper – leaving them once again at the mercy of the white elite.

In a report published in June, Reuters found that a fifth of the U.S. political elite – congressional members, living presidents, Supreme Court justices and governors – are direct descendants of slaveholders in America. Among the richest just before the Civil War were the forebears of three members of today’s Congress: Hill, Representative Dina Titus and Senator John Kennedy. Each had a slaveholding ancestor who was among the wealthiest 1% of Americans in 1860, Reuters found. By 1870, each of those forebears had lost between 60% and 90% of their wealth.

What remained, however, was land – and key social and political connections that, a 2021 study concludes, proved critical to the financial recoveries of the largest slaveholding families.

Such connections, Reuters found, helped the ancestors of Hill, Titus and Kennedy. In each family lineage, for example, at least two slaveholders or their descendants married descendants of other enslavers, pooling their assets and increasing their influence as they shaped the South’s postwar economy.

“The power of enslavers came not simply from their ownership of property, but from their ability to wield political power and from their clans,” said Steven Hahn, a professor of history at New York University who studies slavery, capitalism and the U.S. South.

Hahn said he believes that some lawmakers in both political parties benefit from advantages that stem from the slaveholdings of their ancestors. “And to this day,” he said, “their power and wealth can’t be dissociated from that.” Representative French Hill, Republican from Arkansas Representative Dina Titus, Democrat from Nevada Senator John Kennedy, Republican from Louisiana

In examining the lineages of Hill, Titus and Kennedy, Reuters focused on how their forebears reclaimed family wealth and power in the decades following the post-war Reconstruction era. It was a time when the old South sought to reassert itself socially and politically, stripping away the rights Black people had gained during Reconstruction before federal troops withdrew from the region in 1877.

Hill’s great-great-grandfather leased prisoners, most of them Black, to pick cotton and handle other farmwork for pennies a day in Arkansas. Unlike the people Hill’s ancestors enslaved, the prisoners represented labor without substantial investment.

A forebear of Titus married the daughter of a former congressman and slaveholder, and became a regional power broker in politics and real estate. In an address to state lawmakers, he explained that “in Georgia, the white race intended to dominate the negro race and control the government of the state, no matter how large the negro majority,” according to a newspaper account at the time.

And Kennedy’s ancestors expanded the family’s Louisiana land holdings through marriage and inheritance, then used poor Black farmers to work the land. Family estate records and an interview with a descendant of one of those farmers suggest the family used both sharecropping and tenant farming, which effectively kept some of their Black neighbors in debt.

As Black people were denied basic rights, the strategies used by the ancestors of today’s political elites illustrate key facets of the legacy of slavery in America. Taken together, they make clear how the descendants of some of the largest former slaveholders regained prominence and wealth by subjugating Black people in new ways after 1865.

“At the moment of emancipation and the end of the Civil War, when there could have been a massive redistribution of wealth to the people whose forced labor had created it, that did not happen,” said Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. “Instead the plantation class reorganized itself and the laws to ensure continued privilege – and privilege built on the exploitation of Black labor.”

Determining how much of a family’s money today came from an ancestral slaveholder is exceedingly difficult. Fortunes made through chattel slavery – or through the abusive labor practices in the decades after emancipation – were lost, built upon or divided among multiple heirs over many generations.

But more than cash wealth was passed down. Slaveholding had enabled families to buy land and invest in other industries. It allowed access to top schools for their children, giving their descendants entry into prominent occupations. And it helped them foster relationships with other leading families, building connections that reinforced their economic interests, said Joshua Rosenbloom, an economist at Iowa State University who has studied wealth before and after the Civil War.

“At the moment of emancipation and the end of the Civil War, when there could have been a massive redistribution of wealth to the people whose forced labor had created it, that did not happen.”

While the formerly enslaved were “essentially turned loose without any assets and had to support themselves,” the wealth accrued through slaveholding provided a cushion for white families that allowed them “to suffer short-run losses” but continue to take risks, he said.

“We still have this notion of America as a land of opportunity,” Rosenbloom said. “Understanding the extent to which that’s true and the ways in which it’s constrained is central to understanding our own self-image and understanding how people succeed.”

In approaching the three lawmakers, Reuters asked about the ways their forebears regained their wealth and standing in the post-slavery South. “None of them bear any personal responsibility for the specific actions that their ancestor did,” said Douglas A. Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. But in learning about the choices their forebears made, Blackmon said, the legislators should “consider what that history means.”

Neither Hill nor Kennedy commented specifically for this story. In June, Hill issued a statement for a previous Reuters story, calling slavery “a scourge” and saying “we as a nation must recognize our past, learn from it, and look to the future.” In 2019, Kennedy called slavery “reprehensible,” but noted: “I believe in personal responsibility, and I just don’t think someone today is responsible for what someone else did 150 years ago.”

For this article, Titus provided a statement: “Slavery is a deplorable part of our history, and I have no bonds with any long-dead relatives connected to it. We must not forget the cruelty visited upon Black Americans over generations as we commit to systemic reform that ensures equal rights for all. That principle has guided my personal life, professional career, and political record.”

The early childhood of John M. Gracie, an ancestor of U.S. Representative French Hill, was swaddled in the wealth produced by slavery. When Gracie was 4 years old, his father enslaved 11 people in New Gascony, Arkansas. Nearby, grandfather Creed Taylor enslaved 70. Combined, their estates would be worth as much as $119 million today – almost all of it in the value of their land and the Black men, women and children they listed as personal property.

After emancipation, the family retained its land. But who would work it? Gracie began experimenting with a variety of solutions after taking over from his grandfather in the 1880s, including using poor Black farmers and immigrant laborers from China.

But another option would prove lucrative, speeding the family’s path to greater prosperity and landholdings: leasing prisoners from the government.

Convict leasing involved paying the state or county for the use of prisoners, most of whom were Black. After Reconstruction ended, Southern legislatures enacted racist laws that diminished the rights of Black people and provided the pretext to jail them for petty transgressions. Often illiterate and struggling to make a living, they were ill-equipped to defend themselves in court or pay the fines that followed.

Cotton baron John M. Gracie, via The Jefferson County Historical Quarterly

Southern states used the system to address budget deficits and inadequate prison capacity after the Civil War, while providing a cheap and essentially disposable source of labor to the highest bidder.

“Convict leasing was a method of truly resurrecting something that looked almost exactly like the slavery that had existed before the Civil War,” said author Blackmon, who teaches at Georgia State University. “It was not typical for convicts to go back into the exact same kinds of plantation settings ... but Arkansas was a place where that did happen.”

Unlike purchasing the people Gracie’s ancestors enslaved, leasing prisoners didn’t require a substantial up-front investment for landowners. And if prisoners died doing the backbreaking work, others could quickly take their places.

Gracie signed contracts with local governments to use prisoners. They were housed on Gracie’s land, and the conditions were grim, according to newspaper accounts and government reports from the time. Men were whipped. Others died of heatstroke. One lost a foot to frostbite. At least a dozen prisoners, mostly Black men, lost their lives on Gracie land from 1890 to 1905, according to newspaper and state reports.

In 1888, for example, a state board reviewed a report by the penitentiary physician that examined the conditions at several prison labor camps. The report found 44 prisoners at a Gracie camp who, when not doing hard labor, were confined to a windowless pen measuring 20 feet by 20 feet. Ten years later, a Black man named Caesar Washington sued Gracie.

Washington had been pardoned by the governor of Arkansas, who noted his poor health. A petition presented by a government attorney mentioned, too, the fine and offense that put Washington on Gracie’s farm: $5 for “disturbing the peace by using profane and insulting language to a colored woman.”

In his lawsuit, Washington alleged that while serving on one of Gracie’s prison labor farms, he was “brutally beat, struck, whipped, kicked and maltreated.” The assaults were so bad, the 67-year-old shoemaker said, that he was left “wholly and permanently incapacitated from earning a living.”

Reuters could find no record showing how the suit against Gracie was resolved.

Amid similar allegations of mistreatment, Gracie thrived. He expanded the family’s farming operations, clearing thousands of acres of land around New Gascony and buying additional plantations near the Arkansas River. In 1908, news accounts said Gracie controlled 23,000 acres of land across multiple plantations and used as many as 250 prison laborers at a time.

Gracie’s precise profits are unclear. As of 1902, his contract with Pulaski County, for example, indicates he paid the local government 25 cents per day per prisoner, according to a newspaper account. Around the same time, the state of Arkansas’ own convict leasing operation, with a daily net cost of 27 cents per worker, produced a net profit of 48 cents – nearly twice as much as the cost of its labor.

After a 23-year run, Gracie ended his profitable business of using convict labor in 1909, as lawsuits and government investigations kept stacking up. In newspaper stories, Gracie had referred to the lawsuits by former prisoners as an “attempted hold up,” though he allowed that “it is impossible to handle a large number of convicts without sometimes resorting to somewhat extreme means in order to maintain discipline.”

But Gracie’s brutal practices didn’t affect his community standing. He was revered by white people in the Little Rock and Pine Bluff areas, where Gracie served as a senior executive for a bank and a railroad company. He supported local Catholic causes, helping to finance a school for Black children.

He and his family lived in Little Rock, in a Greek-revival mansion that he bought for as much as $7.6 million in today’s money. There, his wife and daughters threw parties for as many as 175 people, decorating with magnolia blossoms and Japanese lanterns.

After he stopped using prisoners and Black tenant farmers, Gracie turned to Italian immigrants. But he soon soured on the Italian workers as “money mad” – they complained of debts they couldn’t work off and poor conditions, including holes in the floors of their cabins and rampant malaria. Many Italians left Gracie’s plantations. By 1918, several hundred Black tenant farmers once again worked his land, despite Gracie’s published comments years earlier in which he referred to Black laborers as “irresponsible, dishonest and very poor workmen” – a common racist trope.

His cotton empire began to crumble after prices crashed in 1920. Gracie would lose his farmland and sell the mansion in Little Rock. But in the lineage that leads to Congressman Hill, the family’s standing endured.

In 1924, Gracie’s granddaughter married another prominent Arkansan. Gracie died at the age of 76 in 1933 – the same year his granddaughter’s husband, James “Jay” Wilson Hill, established one of the first investment banking firms in the state.

Today, Gracie’s great-great-grandson is an accomplished member of Congress, representing Arkansas’ second congressional district since 2015. As a teenager, James French Hill worked summers at the family brokerage firm before attending Vanderbilt University. By his 30s, he was a U.S. Treasury Department official and a senior economic policy adviser to President George H.W. Bush.

In 1999, Hill helped found a Little Rock-based financial firm, Delta Trust & Banking Corp. Hill served as chairman and chief executive officer there.

Hill has shown a deep appreciation for history, describing himself as a ninth-generation Arkansan and serving as a commissioner for the Historic Arkansas Museum.

In 2011, when the former Gracie mansion was renovated with a loan from Hill’s Delta Trust bank, Hill wrote to the new owner. “Our family would (be) honored if you elected to name the development for John M,” the note read. It was.

In 2015, when Hill was sworn into Congress, he used a family Bible. It had been passed down from John M. Gracie’s father, a slaveholder.

Hill’s latest public financial disclosures show his net worth at between $10.3 million and $25.7 million, including his Little Rock residence. His holdings include a family investment vehicle with a name that echoes his family’s ancestral plantation: “New Gascony Company, LLC”.

Powerbrokers and the Leisure Economy

In 1820, Francis Hopkins enslaved 183 people on his cotton plantation along the coast of Georgia. The son of a British naval officer, Hopkins also was a member of the state legislature. He is the great-great-great-great-grandfather of U.S. Representative Dina Titus – and the single largest slaveholder among the ancestors of America’s political elite identified by Reuters.

Titus, in her seventh term in Congress representing the state of Nevada, is the direct descendant of at least seven slaveholders, Reuters found. Five of those ancestors lived in Georgia, where Titus was born and raised.

After the Civil War, the son of Francis Hopkins reached out to the local branch of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the agency set up to assist the formerly enslaved during Reconstruction. Thomas S. Hopkins, who had also been a slaveholder, lodged a complaint, bureau records show. “The ‘Freedman’ on his plantation refuse to work,” it read, and “he wishes them removed.”

The message was a sign of things to come for the Hopkins family and the place they called home: Thomasville, a town in the deepest reaches of south Georgia.

Thomas Spalding Hopkins, a physician, reimagined Thomasville as a place for those seeking relief from respiratory illnesses. Via Thomasville History Center

Many Southern landowners clung to farming, but this branch of the Hopkins family was largely forsaking agriculture. Thomas Hopkins was a physician, and by 1871 the mayor of Thomasville. Three years later, he presented a paper to the Medical Association of Georgia.

Dr. Hopkins contended that his town was the ideal place to recover from “consumption,” as tuberculosis was then called. In an 1882 letter published in the Atlanta Medical Register, he extolled the virtues of Thomasville’s “dryness of the climate” and the city’s distance from the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, with their dangerous “saline vapor and moisture.”

His pitch, made through travel advertisements and testimonials to medical journals, effectively rebranded Thomasville as a destination for the ailing. The city was highlighted in a Harper’s magazine article in 1887, which described it alongside winter resorts that included the south of France, Switzerland and the Adirondacks.

The son of Dr. Hopkins continued those efforts. But as Henry W. Hopkins himself became a prominent political figure, he used the family name and influence to launch an even greater transformation of Thomasville – one that in some ways capitalized on recreating elements of the antebellum South.

Often referred to as Judge Hopkins for one of the many offices he would hold, Henry married the daughter of a former U.S. congressman, who had also been a slaveholder. For parts of five decades that followed the end of Reconstruction, Judge Hopkins was one of the most influential men in the region.

From the mid-1880s through 1900, Hopkins spent nine terms as Thomasville’s mayor. When he wasn’t at city hall, he served in the state legislature – for 17 years between 1894 and 1926. Family papers reviewed by Reuters show Judge Hopkins traded favors with newspaper editors and politicians. He helped wealthy Northerners and Midwesterners, including Standard Oil heirs, acquire land, then hosted elaborate hunting trips. In the off-season, he often managed the plantations they bought.

In and around Thomasville, he built a social dynasty by brokering the sale of these plantations to monied outsiders, drawn to hunt quail and experience the old South.

Southerners like Hopkins “basically ran these places like their fiefdoms,” said historian Hahn. “And poor white people and poor Black people were expected to bow down to them.”

These were “big families who wielded an enormous amount of patronage and either occupied local offices or had clients who did,” he said.

Through his law firm and real estate brokerage, Judge Hopkins “compiled, and eventually sold, almost every one of the original plantations that now are such a wonderful part of our southern life,” according to a book written by his great-grandson.

In the world Judge Hopkins helped create, the old plantations became country lodges. Well-to-do white people attended Christmas fox hunts and “fancy dress” balls where they danced the Virginia reel. Black families worked on those properties as servants and hunting guides. Part of the allure for some Northerners came in touring the homes of the county’s poorer Black residents.

“When it becomes clear that there is interest in vestiges of the old South … there’s a real sense that you can sell this,” said Julia Brock, a history professor at the University of Alabama who co-wrote a book about Thomas County and surrounding areas.

“There was a real interest in Black life,” Brock said. But that interest was in the nostalgia of the antebellum South, “not Black life as it was emerging into freedom.”

The economic success of the country-lodge plantations recaptured some of the Hopkins family’s standing as “part of a gentry,” Brock said, conferring upon him “a central place in a new social world.”

The system that now offered leisure for the wealthy still depended on Black labor, from tending dogs to driving carriages to serving supper to making sure quail nests were safe from natural predators.

It was “a feudal-type thing” for Black people, said Titus Brown, a history professor at Florida A&M University.

Brown, who co-wrote a book built around interviews with former employees of area plantations, said working on the leisure plantations was like living in a bubble. That leisure economy provided Black families with jobs and other benefits, including medical care and access to education. And it granted them “some protection, as long as they are not violating the social conduct or etiquette,” Brown said.

Judge Hopkins’ life and livelihood exemplified the nature of that social contract.

After a school for Black students burned down in a neighboring county, Hopkins donated land for a new location in Thomas County. He also connected Black people whom he knew to the white families who owned the plantations, recommending them for plum jobs.

But Hopkins had also been an early member of the Ku Klux Klan, and he sought to reassure white people that his vision for the region wouldn’t upset their primacy.

In 1905, for instance, state lawmakers debated whether to create a new county by peeling land from Thomas County and an adjacent county. Critics argued doing so would give Black residents an electoral advantage in two of the counties. Hopkins favored the move, and he testified before state lawmakers. According to The Atlanta Constitution, Hopkins “devoted his time to answering the argument of the opposition relating to negro domination,” and “closed with an eloquent reference to the fact that in Georgia the white race intended to dominate the negro race and control the government of the state, no matter how large the negro majority.” Judge H.W. Hopkins, an avid hunter, helped turn plantations into country lodges. Via Thomasville History Center

Judge Hopkins was in his 80s when sociologist Arthur Raper visited Thomasville in the early 1930s. Raper sought to explore the reasons behind lynchings in America, and two had taken place in Thomas County in 1930.

In one case, a Black man was accused of attacking a 9-year-old white girl. The man was jailed, and a mob gathered. When authorities tried to move the man to a different location, the mob wrenched him from the sheriff and told the man to run. Then they shot him repeatedly from behind.

The mob tied the man’s body to the back of a car and dragged him through town, his corpse almost hitting a pedestrian, Raper wrote. The killers did not bother covering their faces, according to Raper’s account. Still, no one came forward to identify them.

Raper wanted to learn more about the leaders of a town where such a thing could happen. Among those he interviewed was Judge Hopkins.

Hopkins and other leading citizens of Thomas County, Raper wrote, saw themselves as above poor white people. The sociologist referred to them as the “local landed aristocracy” and wrote of their paternalistic attitude toward Black people. Raper paraphrased it as: “Why you know, that fellow’s grandmother belonged to my mother’s father.”

Hopkins, he wrote, called lynchings the work of lower elements of white society: “I’ll give anybody a thousand dollars who’ll find either a son or a grandson of a slaveowner participating in a lynching.”

Raper found that Hopkins had once been a member of the Klan – using the phrase “the original Ku Klux Klan.” He was referring to the group’s first incarnation, when the Klan rose during the federal occupation of the South in the Reconstruction years. Writing in 1932, Raper said Hopkins had recently declined to join the reconstituted Klan.

Hopkins’ great-grandson later wrote of watching Judge Hopkins meet with “a group of hooded and sheeted figures” assembled on the lawn. They had come to ask him to “join in some sort of mission or action.” Judge Hopkins, according to his great-grandson, told the men to contact the police if a law had been broken. Otherwise, Hopkins told them, “you men must go home and hang up your robes for good.”

Judge Hopkins had no need to circumvent state power. He and others like him now were in control. Hopkins lived into his 90s, dying in 1945.

His great-great-granddaughter, Dina Titus, was born in Thomasville and grew up in Tifton, a town about 50 miles to the north. She graduated from the College of William and Mary, earned a master’s degree from the University of Georgia, then got a doctorate at Florida State University. She taught government for more than 30 years at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Like her forebears, she pursued a career in politics. In 1988, she was elected to the Nevada State Senate, where she served as Democratic minority leader for 15 years. In 2008, she was elected to Congress.

Disclosure forms and real estate records show her net worth at between $978,000 and $2.5 million. The median U.S. family had a net worth of $193,000 in 2022, according to a survey for the Federal Reserve Board.

The Paralyzing Debt of Sharecroppers

The farm fields of Catahoula and Concordia parishes made white men rich and Black men miserable for many years in central Louisiana. Fed by a sprawling set of waterways, Concordia’s floodplains turned into what some call “million-dollar soil,” sprouting rows thick with cotton that were flanked by towering plantation homes.

Central Louisiana is where the ancestors of U.S. Senator John N. Kennedy came to secure their fortunes. In 1840, less than 30 years after Louisiana became a state, Kennedy’s great-great-great-grandfather enslaved 120 people in Concordia Parish. His estate in 1860 was worth about $57 million in current day dollars. His ancestor’s brother, a farmer and politician, enslaved 55 people on his Mississippi land in 1860. He then used cash from that estate – worth some $68 million in today’s dollars – to buy nearly 1,800 acres in neighboring Catahoula Parish.

After the Civil War, when the Black people they had enslaved were freed, the forebears of Kennedy were never again as rich. But they remained monied and powerful – a lineage of doctors, politicians and landowners surrounded by poor Black families.

Marriages between the descendants of slaveholders further grew their holdings. Among the senator’s direct ancestors was his great-grandfather, Leonidas Calhoun, who controlled large swathes of land along or near the Mississippi River Delta.

Calhoun went to medical school in Kentucky in the 1880s, then returned to live on a family plantation in Catahoula Parish. From there, he practiced medicine and oversaw hundreds of acres of farmland in Catahoula and adjacent Concordia Parish. He died in 1903 at age 44.

Portrait of Leonidas Calhoun. Via Facebook

At the time of his death, estate records examined by Reuters suggest that the Calhoun family was both sharecropping its land and also renting out larger tracts to tenant farmers.

In sharecropping, landholders typically gave farmers the right to live on and farm their land in exchange for a portion of the crops they produced. Farmers – those around the Calhoun land were typically Black and illiterate – often needed credit from their landlords simply to put a crop in the fields. Owners would front them everything from food and clothing to seeds and tools, typically provided at inflated prices and sold at stores on the plantations themselves.

After harvest, whatever was borrowed was deducted from the sharecropper’s earnings. In bad years, many may have owed more than they earned. Until those debts were repaid, laws forbade sharecroppers from leaving.

“During the end of the year, when it’s time for settlement, (landowners) would then pull out these accounting records to say, ‘Oh, you and your family almost made it out of debt,’” said Cassie Sade Turnipseed, a history professor at Jackson State University who has studied sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta.

Using the appraisal of Calhoun’s assets and matching them with census records, Reuters identified at least two Black farmers who owed Calhoun money at that time.

One was Granville Swift. Records show he owed $20 to Calhoun, and the debt was already at least six months past due. The 1900 census shows that Swift, a 23-year-old Black farmer, lived with his 22-year-old wife, who was a farmhand. Both were illiterate. Swift is also listed as a farmer in Catahoula Parish in the 1910 census, and records indicate he died there in 1918, at age 42. Reuters could find no evidence that he ever owned any of the land he farmed.

Another Black farmer who owed Calhoun money was Ben Polk. His debt was $5, according to estate records. The 1900 census for Catahoula Parish shows 49-year-old Benjamin Polk. He was listed as the head of a household with 10 other mouths to feed: his wife, eight children and one grandchild.

At some plantations, the owners issued their own scrip for use at their stores. Turnipseed, the scholar of sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta, said this meant that, even in profitable years, sharecroppers were unable “to acquire any kind of wealth because your currency would only be honored in very limited ways” on the plantation.

In an interview with Reuters, Ben Polk’s great-granddaughter recounted her ancestors’ description of working the Calhoun land.

Men in the family labored “sun up to sun down” in the cotton fields and had little autonomy, said Bettye Johnson, now 75. She said they were forced to buy food and goods on credit and at inflated prices in a plantation general store. Their debts often dwarfed their earnings, Johnson said.

“It was the Calhouns’ place,” Johnson said, “and they were in charge.” In the 1930 census, the occupation for Leonidas Calhoun’s son, who inherited the family land, was listed as “overseer” of a plantation.

The struggle to earn a living was intensified by violence and racial animus, some that was chronicled by the Calhoun family itself.

Legacy of Slavery

The 1870 census shows the dramatic disparities after the end of slavery between Black and white people in Concordia Parish, Louisiana.

During Reconstruction, Black residents of Concordia Parish gained power at the voting booth.

In 1860, about 91% of people living there were counted as “slaves,” the third-highest percentage of any county or parish in the United States, according to data from a recent study. After emancipation, Black people outnumbered white people in the parish 9,257 to 720.

Those figures underscore how important slavery was to families including the Calhouns, and how different the post-slavery political landscape became during Reconstruction. In the 1870s, Black men in Concordia were sheriffs and district court clerks. A formerly enslaved man was elected to the state legislature and then founded a newspaper.

A book by a local historian named Robert Dabney Calhoun, a nephew of Leonidas Calhoun, provided a window into how at least some local white people viewed those results. Black officeholders, Robert Dabney Calhoun wrote, were “illiterate, dishonest and sweating” men who carried out “unscrupulous designs.”

“Our substantial citizens were forced to engage in election manipulations,” wrote Calhoun. “They prayed for the dawning of the new day of white supremacy.”

That is what the white people of Concordia and surrounding parishes established for decades, by unleashing a deadly campaign in the 1870s.

“Lynchings, massacres, and terroristic intimidation was absolutely central to how many plantation dynasties reasserted dominance,” said John Bardes, a history professor at Louisiana State University, whose studies focus on slavery in Louisiana. “It was just horrific spasms of violence all throughout the state.”

A recent report by the The Equal Justice Initiative found that Louisiana ranked third in the nation between 1877 and 1950 in what it terms “racial terror lynchings” – killings that were “acts of terrorism” outside of any legal proceedings. The state had 549 such murders in that period, the group found.

Around the time Leonidas Calhoun took control of the land in Concordia and Catahoula parishes, white people across the South had succeeded at reasserting political dominance. Another report by the Equal Justice Initiative notes that, “from 1885 to 1908, all 11 former Confederate states rewrote their constitutions to restrict voting rights using poll taxes, literacy tests, and felon disenfranchisement.”

Near the turn of the 20th century, changes in Louisiana tightly restricted who could vote. In 1897, before the changes, state records show 164,088 registered white voters and 130,344 registered Black voters. After the changes, records show 125,437 registered white voters and just 5,320 registered Black voters in 1900. The year after Leonidas Calhoun died, the number of registered Black voters across all of Louisiana had dropped to 1,718.

Today, the great-grandson of Leonidas Calhoun is the junior U.S. senator representing Louisiana. John Neely Kennedy – his middle name is the surname of two of his slaveholding ancestors – was president of his senior class at Vanderbilt University. He graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law, and earned a degree in civil law from Oxford University in England. Before being elected to the Senate in 2016, he spent five terms as Louisiana’s treasurer.

Real estate records and Kennedy’s latest public financial disclosures show his net worth is between $8.3 million and $22.6 million.

Kennedy doesn’t live in either Concordia or Catahoula parish. But after his mother died, he was named as one of the inheritors of her estate. Among her possessions listed in a 2005 probate document was hundreds of acres in Catahoula – family land that once belonged to one of Kennedy’s slaveholding ancestors.

Slavery’s Descendants

PART 1

America’s Family Secret

INTERACTIVE

Explore The Ties To Slavery

PART 2

“The Slaves Built That”

PART 3

“All We Are is Memory”

PART 4

American Dreams

PART 5

The Crown, the Cabinet and the UK’s Legacy of Slavery

PART 6

Heirs of Power

#Heirs of Power #us slavery

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pedrospatch · 2 years ago

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FUCK LUKE JOEL MILLER SUPREMACY

But seriously, great chapter!!! The tension? The kissing? The Ellie and Dina?? Loved it!!!

TEAM JOEL 5 EVER 😂

thank you for reading bb! Ellie x Dina was so much fun to writeeee I am unapologetically going to give her the happiness she deserves

#vee answers mail 💌#;a safe haven

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theanticool · 1 year ago

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youtube

Dina Thorslund vs Niorkis Carreno - 9/4/2022

It is a huge week for women's boxing as we have unification going on in the bantamweight division. The #1 and #2 118lbers will be going head to head for supremacy in the division. In one corner we have WBO champion, Dina Thorslund (19-0, 8 KOs) of Denmark. Thorslund will be looking for her 8th defense of the WBO title as well as looking to capture the WBC title from champion Yuliahn Luna Avila (25-3-1). Thorslund has been on a run of late, finishing two of her last three challengers (both former world champions at lower weight classes).

Thorslund and Avila will face off this Friday (Sept. 1) around 12pm ET on FITE TV for those interested. It's like $6.99 for the standalone event or available if you have FITE+.

#Dina Thorslund #Niorkis Carreno #Boxing #Boxing Bouts #Youtube

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wafflesthewombat · 1 year ago

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Not really an ask, more like a funny statement. When I saw your follow request my first thought was:

"if this is a bot, it has great taste going with a Dina icon." Lol

My second thought was "holy shit an actual human!" 🤣

Tis I a real human lol! Also Dina supremacy I love her

#tlou #dina nolastname

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msmisthios · 2 months ago

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had to make a new profile pic bc i believe in dina supremacy 😀👍

#shes so criminally underrated n i love her #dina haters stay away from me #tlou

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bilbobagginsomebabez · 9 months ago

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I think one thing that impacts this is general lack of understanding of whiteness itself or recognition that whiteness is itself conditional. whiteness constructs a mythology of supremacy that must be upheld, and if you fail to uphold it, your position as "white" can and will be removed. it can also be given, which is why whiteness can be assimilated into, as with the Irish, German, and Italian immigrant populations in the 19th & early 20th century US. this reality is directly contradictory to the white supremacist myth that white supremacy is racial, genetic, traceable, and immutable.

conditional whiteness is most obvious in the case of "white trash" (which incidentally makes it a very valuable group in determining the borders of whiteness). group labeling processes generally have two narratives in negotiation with each other. the ingroup perceptions and determinations put forward (esoteric) and the outgroup perceptions and determinations (exoteric). what the group says about themselves vs what is said about them. as the dominant sociocultural group, whiteness says a LOT about other groups and tolerates very little said about itself. in order to define and understand whiteness, you must look at its borders. where white becomes not white and why. the term white trash is particularly clear in its esoteric and exoteric roots. "white" is provided by the ingroup as a constant reminder of the privileges and treatment they "should" have under white supremacy while "trash" is provided by the larger white outgroup--"not one of us." [academic passages under the cut via (1) Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness by Matt Wray (2) Cultural Studies Misfit: White Trash Studies by Dina Smith (3) Unpopular Culture: The Case of White Trash by John Hartigan]

Jewish people and Ashkenazim in particular are white when they are serving the interests of white supremacy and they are Not White when they refuse or when their needs oppose the mythology and requirements of whiteness. for example, anti-zionist jews are being cut out of their communities and certainly aren't considered white right now due to their opposition to the current requirements of whiteness. Amy Schumer, rich zionist making a genocide about herself and how scared she would be 'as a Jewish person' if Israel isn't allowed to continue the genocide, is absolutely white as fuckin snow right now. she is enthusiastically performing the requirements of whiteness by fearmongering against a racialized other which cements her position within the dominant racial category. whiteness draws borders around the outside, always making sure that they land on the powerful side of the division.

so like white trash, Jewish people in the US with pale skin are conditionally white as long as they toe the line and reinforce mythologies of white supremacy. the material benefits and privileges of whiteness create a strong incentive to assimilate and perform these expectations. that privilege is key. They are presumed to be white until proven otherwise, which continuously creates and destroys a precarious state of white privilege and often engenders a rabid loyalty to whiteness in an attempt to stabilize that privilege and retain it as a continuous social resource. which is why white trash people are often some of the most racist motherfuckers you'll ever meet in your life, why the Irish burned down Black neighborhoods during the draft riots, and why zionism with its ties to colonial hegemony manufacture whiteness. the subjugation of a racialized other creates white supremacy and the privilege that goes along with it.

Matt Wray, Not Quite White: White trash and the boundaries of whiteness

Dina Smith, Cultural Studies' Misfit: White Trash Studies

John Hartigan, Unpopular Culture: The Case of White Trash

re holocaust exceptionalism: as someone who's genuinely annoyed by how ashkenazim do not realize that they're "white" in the us, i really don't think ethnic ashkenazim being white by today's standards has anything to do with conclusions that the holocaust was "unique" or that it's worth recognizing, let alone why its memory is used to justify -sraeli atrocities. the us (for example) is perfectly capable of recognizing the danger uyghurs (largely not white) are being put through - the fault of china, the "enemy superpower" - while not recognizing the danger palestinians (largely not white) are being put through - the fault of their vassal state in the middle east and their own blind support for it.

at the end of the day, countries like the us view the holocaust the way they do because it's both "safe" and politically advantageous for them to view it that way. compare that to, like, iran, who doesn't have good relations with the us and its friends, hence that holocaust denial conference ahmadinejad hosted in 2006 where he invited david duke to speak. (yes, really, look it up.) also compare it to how the us has yet to recognize the many genocides it's committed against native americans, let alone making any significant effort at reparations past whatever haphazard thing they drafted up in the 19th century. the "unique" thing could be a way to deny other genocides the us and its allies were involved in as much as it could be a genuine belief that the genocides the us was complicit in were justified, but it doesn't matter.

as for why individuals think that way, i'd say it's more on a case-by-case basis. some understand how political atrocity recognition and having an ethnostate of your own are and are afraid that losing "power" will somehow make the world revert to rampant antisemitism. some think the us is acting out of the kindness of its heart and are just mindlessly swallowing hasbara narratives that people wanting a free palestine also want to kill every jew. either way, you get the sense that jewish people who are z-onists who think this way are placing themselves in some sort of "competition" against palestinians and other oppressed people, like there's only so much love to go around. looking at the world in this way is selfish, even if it comes out of fear, but you don't need me to tell you that.

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elliespassagerprincess · 1 year ago

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Do u think u could write an Ellie x reader story based on the song emily I’m sorry by boygenius TYSMMMMMM I LOVE UR STUFF

Emily I'm sorry - (ellie williams x reader)

hi anon! thank you sm for the compliment and also boygenius supremacy<3

This story is based off the song Emily I'm sorry by boygenius, if you can please listen to the song as you're reading... Also I did something a little different, I took inspiration from the song, so its not 100% based off song lyrics. The over all message of the song and some scenarios is in the story:)

Pairing: ellie x fem!reader

Requests are always open feel free to leave one or just send me a song and I'll take it from there:)

Warnings: obsession, stalking, murder, violence, gore, death, toxic relationships

Summary: In which Ellie is fucking crazy

wc: 1.7K

She's asleep in the backseat

Looking peaceful enough to me

But she's waking up inside a dream

Full of screeching tires and fire

We're coming back from where no one lives

Pretty much just veterans

When I pointed out where the North Star is

She called me a fucking liar

Ellie’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. Her knuckles turned white, her shoulders were tense. She stared off into the distance thinking about the situation she found herself in. She started at him through the rear view mirror waiting to see if he would wake up, or if he was dead.

Ellie had been sitting in this abandoned parking lot for hours now. She couldn’t go back to Jackson with Jesse beat up, full of blood and possibly dead. People would ask too many questions. Questions she isn’t ready to answer. She wasn’t ready to face the consequences that were waiting for her back in Jackson.

Her thoughts were interrupted when she heard a groan coming from behind her. Ellie looked over her shoulder and she was met with a bloodied and tied up Jesse looking back at her with tears in his eyes.

The two started at each other in silence for a few seconds. They both waiting for the other one to say something.

And finally, finally Jesse spoke up.

“Please tell me this is a dream” he looked at Ellie eyes wide, filled with tears. Ellie felt the guilt grow in her stomach as she heard Jesse let out a whimper when she didn’t answer his question.

“Please” he asked again “Please tell me this is nightmare”

Ellie let out a shaky breath before she answered him: “no its not”

Jesse let out a loud sob at her words. Ellie turned herself away from the backseat. Her guilt was already eating her alive, but hearing Jesse fucking sob was not making it easier. Ellie’s hands met with the steering wheel again, gripping it with a tightly once again.

Ellie looked over to the passenger seat and a small smile appeared on her face for the first time that day. You always sat there. You would make stupid jokes that would make Ellie smile like an idiot, how you would always pack lunch for her and leave it on the passenger seat and leaving a note saying “your temporary princess”

fuck. She misses you.

“You’re going to kill be aren’t you?” Jesse asked from the backseat.

“Yeah” Ellie sighed “I have to”

“I won’t tell anyone about this and what you did to Dina”

“I don’t believe you”

“Ellie I know what Dina did to your girl wasn’t very nice but that didn’t mean you had to kill her- “

“Dina deserved to die” Ellie replied quickly “you deserve it too” she continued. She looked back at Jesse when he went silent. A grin appeared on Ellie’s face as she turned the key. The car rumbled underneath the two of them as Ellie asked one last question to Jesse:

“should I slit your throat or should I shoot your brains out?”

Emily, I'm sorry I just

Make it up as I go along

And I can feel myself becoming

Someone only you could want

Ellie was sorry. She was sorry that on that one faithful night in October that she let you walk out. If she could go back in time she would. She would’ve stopped you and locked you in her apartment.

And as soon as you walked out that door Ellie didn’t hear from you again.

You and Ellie had met at a park. It was the night Cat broke up with her. Ellie remembers sitting at a bench at 3 in morning just sobbing, but then she heard your voice for the first time.

“Hey” you said softly “I don’t know if you’re drunk or if you got your heart broken but here’s a slice of bread”

Ellie’s brows furrowed and she looked up at you: “why are you giving me one slice of bread?” she asked confused.

“well because if you’re drunk my mom said that a slice of bread will sober you up and if you’re heartbroken then it’s a snack”

Ellie cracked a smile for the first time that night. You don’t even know why you helped her that night.

Sometimes you regret giving her that stupid piece of bread.

Ever since that night you and Ellie practically became best friends. And from best friends the two of you quickly started dating. And you were happy. Both of you were.

Until you noticed Ellie’s obsessive behavior.

Sometimes when you would open the curtains in your apartment you’d see Ellie sitting on that bench staring at your place. There were times you would walk in on Ellie sniffing and sometimes stealing your clothes. You don’t know but somehow Ellie managed to go through every single one of your contacts and calling each of them to ask what their intention with you was.

You couldn’t be with someone tracks your every move, Ellie was suffocating you. And no matter much you loved her, you couldn’t do it anymore. For your own mental health and safety, you decided to leave her.

You left Ellie in October. After dating her for 7 months you couldn’t take it anymore.

Love is a beautiful thing but the longer you stayed with Ellie the more you hated the idea of being in relationship.

And even after leaving Ellie it didn’t stop. In fact, she got even worse.

You wished you never gave that slice of bread.

Headed straight for the concrete

In a nightmare, screaming

Now I'm wide awake, spiraling

And you don't want to talk

Just take me back to Montreal

I'll get a real job, you'll go back to school

We can burn out in the freezing cold

And just get lost

The obsession Ellie had with you was toxic. It was bad for her. It was bad for you.

Drug addicts would do anything just to get money to buy more. Just get a hit. Just like Ellie would do anything to get a glimpse of you.

She followed you around. Wherever you were Ellie was.

It was a normal Tuesday for Ellie. She hid in her car watching your apartment.

She just wanted to see you. She just wanted a little peek. No matter how small, she just wanted to see.

To Ellie’s surprise she saw you dressed up, in a white pencil skirt, with a black cropped top saying I love pussy.

You walked out the house, and Ellie’s immediate instinct was to follow you.

She knew what she was doing was wrong. It was illegal. It goes against her morals but for you she would throw away everything.

You walked into a café and Ellie followed you in, she put on sunglasses and she pulled the hood of hoodie up. Ellie sat directly behind you. She could hear everything. As you sat in the café your friend Dina showed up.

Dina didn’t even say hi. All she did was slap you and accuse you of sleeping with her boyfriend. You didn’t even get a word in. And Dina left.

You went home crying, you sobbed for hours.

How could your best friend accuse you of such a thing?

And Ellie watched you through your window all those nights you cried. The way you beat yourself up over something you didn’t do.

Ellie knows you would never do it.

She’s always with you, she would’ve know if you had slept with Jesse.

Ellie saw how much pain you were in and she hated it. She wanted to comfort you and tell you it’s all going to be ok. But she couldn’t. All she could do, was go to person who caused you all this pain.

She was going to make Dina feel what you were feeling.

Maybe not emotionally. But physically.

Oh, Ellie might as well pay Dina’s boyfriend a visit.

Emily, I'm sorry, baby

You know how I get when I'm wrong

And I can feel myself becoming

Somebody I'm not, I'm not, so

Emily, forgive me, can we

Make it up as we go along?

I'm twenty-seven and I don't know who I am

But I know what I want

Ellie was a bad person.

She realized she was when she put the blade between Dina’s lips and harshly pulling it that it cut her mouth open. Ellie listened to Dina’s screams. She watched Dina cry and beg for her life when Ellie hung her on the roof. She watched Dina vomit when Ellie forced her to eat raw meat.

People shouldn’t do this to other people.

But you were worth it.

Ellie would kill millions of people for you.

She shot Jesse in the head, execution style, as she watched a mixture of brains and blood drip from his skull.

To make things romantic she set them both on fire. They could burn in hell together forever.

Ellie made Dina feel the pain that she put you through. Dina deserved it.

Because of her love for you Ellie became the person she never wanted to be. You made her feel and do things she promised herself she would never do. She was not the sweet girl Joel raised.

It’s all for love. Ellie was doing this all for your love.

Ellie hoped you’d forgive her one day.

She hoped you would come back to her and say I miss you lets fix things.

She wished.

She knows what she wants and she wants you.

She needs you.

She needs you to be happy and safe and that why she killed Dina and Jesse. They threatened your safety. They threatened your happiness.

But little did Ellie know she was the one that sucks the joy out you. And even if she knew she would have not believed you.

Ellie was sorry for scaring you when the two of you were together. She was sorry for the time she almost killed your mom because she got too close to you. She’s sorry that she made multiple accounts on Instagram to tell people to unfollow you. She’s sorry she broke into your home that one night when you took too long to respond.

Her biggest regret was not being sneaky enough.

Emily, I'm sorry

I'm sorry

“I’m sorry” Ellie spoke softly as she stood in front of your house.

Ellie doesn’t even know who she’s saying sorry to. To you? For killing your best friends? To Dina? For murdering her? To Jesse? For killing the love of his life or for killing him?

Even though Ellie was saying sorry she didn’t mean it. The guilt she felt when she had Jesse in the car quickly fell away when she realized who she was doing this for.

Dina and Jesse were parasites. They were dirty people who did nothing but hurt other. They deserved to die. She was happy that she killed both of them. She got rid of the people who was hurting you. And she would do it again and again. You didn’t need to know what happened to them.

Ellie raised her hand to knock on your front door. She knocked 3 times before the door opened, and she was met with your sleep filled eyes.

You looked at Ellie taking in her bloody appearance, you gently shook your head before you asked her: “who did you hurt this time?”

“you don’t need to know” Ellie replied quickly as she walked into your house.

You were never getting rid of her. You knew that. You would live the rest of your life being followed by Ellie Williams. You would spend the rest of your life grieving any friendships and relationship you had. Because Ellie was the only one who stayed. Who survived.

You were Ellie’s girl. For the rest of your fucking life.

Authors note: Dude this story would actually have a good part 2 lmao but anyway remember you are loved and to always be kind.

Yours truly,

Zia<3

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