Dr. Due Books

By ELGIN JONES .. SFLTimes.com

 

In the rural Teoc community of Carroll County, Miss., where the ancestors

of Sen. John McCain owned enslaved Africans on a plantation, black, white

and mixed-race relatives unite every two years for their Coming Home

Reunion, on the land where the plantation operated.

Some of McCain’s black relatives say they are not sure exactly where

they fall on the family tree, but they do know this:

They are either descendants of the McCain family slaves, or of children

the McCains fathered with their slaves.  White and black members of

the McCain family have met on the plantation several times over the

last 15 years, but one invited guest has been conspicuously absent:

Sen. John Sidney McCain.

‘Why he hasn’t come is anybody’s guess,’ said Charles McCain Jr., 60,

a distant cousin of John McCain who is black. ‘I think the best I can come

up with, is that he doesn’t have time, or he has just distanced himself, or

it doesn’t mean that much to him.’

Other relatives are not as generous.   Lillie McCain, 56, another distant

cousin of John McCain who is black, said the Republican presidential

nominee is trying to hide his past, and refuses to accept the family’s

history.

‘After hearing him in 2000 claim his family never owned slaves, I

sent him an email,’ she recalled. ‘I told him no matter how much

he denies it, it will not make it untrue, and he should accept this

and embrace it.’ She said the senator never responded to her email.

Although Charles is uncertain who will get his vote for president,

several of John McCain’s black and white relatives are supporting

his Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama.

‘I am absolutely supporting Obama, and it’s not because he’s black.

It’s because he is the best person at this time in our history,’ said

Lillie McCain, a professor of psychology at Mott Community College

in Flint, Michigan.  ’We simply need to look at the economy, and

McCain’s campaign does not take us there,’ said Joyce McCain,

Lillie’s sister, a retired engineering manager with General Motors

who lives in Grand Blanc, Michigan. ‘He is my cousin, but we are

in dire times right now and people are hurting.  Senator Obama

is clearly the best choice to be President.”

 

Charles McCain and his wife, Theresa, who still live in Teoc,

started the reunions over a decade ago. Charles is the deacon

of Mitchell Springs Baptist Church, the only black house of

worship in the area.   When Theresa McCain started the family

reunions in the late 1980s or early ’90s (neither he nor his wife

is sure of the exact starting date), only black relatives attended.

But as word spread about the gatherings, white members of the

McCain family got involved. Today, the reunion has expanded to

the point where it is becoming a community event. The reunion’s

website, teocfamilyreunion.ning.com , has pictures, postings

and other information about the family gatherings.

 

While Sen. McCain’s brother, Joe, and many of his other

white relatives attend the reunions, family members say

Sen. McCain has never acknowledged them, or even

responded to their invitations .

‘Well, a lot of the people who had moved away and were

living up north, would send money to help us maintain the

church,’ said Theresa McCain, 62. ‘Myself and others began

inviting them back home for picnics, just to show our appreciation.’

The McCain campaign did not respond to repeated questions

about John McCain’s black relatives, or about his relatives

of both races who support Obama.

Pablo Carrillo, a media liaison with the McCain campaign,

said the senator was aware of his African-American relatives,

but asked the reporter to put his questions into writing, and

that someone would get back to him.  After the reporter sent

questions in writing, and made repeated follow-up phone calls,

neither Sen. McCain nor anyone else from the campaign

responded.

 

Based on information obtained by the South Florida Times,

the senator has numerous black and mixed-raced relatives

who were born on, or in, the area of the McCain plantation.

The mixed races in the family can be traced back to the rural

Teoc community of Carroll County, Miss., where his family

owned slaves.

Sen. John McCain’s great, great grandfather, William Alexander

McCain (1812-1863), fought for the Confederacy and owned a

2,000-acre plantation named Waverly in Teoc. The family dealt

in the slave trade, and, according to official records, held at least

52 slaves on the family’s plantation.  The enslaved Africans were

likely used as servants, for labor, and for breeding more slaves.

William McCain’s son, and Sen. John McCain’s great grandfather,

John Sidney McCain (1851-1934), eventually assumed the duty

of running the family’s plantation.

 

W.A. ‘Bill’ McCain IV, a white McCain cousin, and his wife Edwina,

are the current owners of the land.  Both told the South Florida Times

 that they attend the reunions. They also said the McCain campaign

had asked them not to speak to the media about the reunions,

or about why the senator has never acknowledged the family

gatherings.

 

In addition to distancing himself from his black family members,

John McCain has taken several positions on issues that have put

him at odds with members of the larger black community.    

While running for the Republican Party nomination in 2000, he sided

with protesters who were calling for the rebel battle flag to be removed

from the South Carolina Statehouse, only to alter that position later.

‘Some view it as a symbol of slavery.  Others view it as a symbol

of heritage,’ John McCain said of the flag.  ‘Personally, I see the

battle flag as a symbol of heritage.  I have ancestors who have

fought for the Confederacy, none of whom owned slaves. I believe

they fought honorably.”

Novelist Elizabeth Spencer, another white cousin of John McCain,

noted the slaves the family owned in the family’s memoirs, Landscapes

of the Heart.  Sen. McCain has acknowledged reading the book, but

claims to have only glossed over entries about their slaves.

‘That’s crazy,’ said Spencer, who also attends the reunions in

Teoc. ‘No one had to tell us, because we all knew about the slaves.

I may not vote, because I don’t want anyone to think that I have

an issue with John, but I don’t want to see him become President

because I think Obama is entirely adequate, and it’s time for a

Democrat.”   Spencer acknowledged donating money to the Obama

campaign and to what she called ‘Democratic causes.’

 

Sen. John McCain was born in 1936 at the Coco Solo Naval

Air Station, a segregated military installation in the Panama Canal,

where his father was stationed in the U.S. Navy.   His family returned

to the states shortly after his birth; where he went on to attend

segregated schools in the Teoc community and elsewhere around

the country.   He served in the Navy, where he was a prisoner of

war during Vietnam, before being released and eventually

running for Congress.

After he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982,

McCain voted against the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday

in 1983.  When he arrived in the U.S. Senate in 1986, he joined North

Carolina, Sen. Jesse Helms in opposing the holiday again, and voted

in 1994 to cut funding to the commission that marketed it.

 
John McCain also aligned himself with former Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham.  

Mecham was the governor in McCain’s home state of Arizona from

January 1987 to April 1988, when he was impeached and removed

from office for campaign finance violations.  As a state senator and

governor, Mecham publicly used racial slurs against black people and

other minorities. He was also a member of the John Birch Society,

which opposes civil rights legislation. In 1986, Mecham campaigned

for governor on a promise to rescind the state’s recognition of the

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, which he did in 1987.  

Earlier this year, during the 40th anniversary recognition of King’s

assassination, McCain, by this time a presidential candidate, only

then said he was wrong for opposing the national King holiday.

 

Politics in America has long been steeped in the dynamics of the

country’s myriad cultures, diverse ethnicities, and varying religious

beliefs.  Several of Sen. McCain’s black relatives say Obama’s

candidacy represents progress.

‘He is denying his black and white relatives in Teoc,’ said

Joyce McCain, 54,. ‘I think he may not want the country to

know his family’s full history, but times have changed and

we need to move on, and that’s why I’m supporting Obama.’