A civil rights activist who took part in the 1970s Black Power movement was flabbergasted to learn she had actually descended from a passenger on the Mayflower. In an episode of PBS’ Find Your Roots that aired late Tuesday, Angela Davis was presented with her family’s ancestry determined by DNA testing. “Do you know what you’re looking at? That is a list of the passengers on the Mayflower,” host Henry Louis Gates Jr. said as her face gave way to confusion. “No, I can’t believe this. No, my ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower,” Davis said, before adding: “Oof! That’s a little bit too much to deal with right now.” She said she “never” imagined she had descended from one of the very first settlers in America. In addition to learning about her 10th great-grandfather, a man born in England named William Brewster, Davis also discovered that one of her distant ancestors on her mother’s side became a slave owner in the 1700s, AL.com reports. “I always imagined my ancestors as the people who were enslaved. It makes me even more committed to struggling for a better world,” she said.
