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Howdy Doody Conservative
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Presumptive Democratic nominee and US vice-president Kamala Harris has Irish roots but not in a way that she is likely to embrace.
Ms Harris is the daughter of Donald J Harris, who was born in Jamaica, and Shyamala Gopalan Harris from India.
Genealogical research carried out by Northern Irish historian Stephen McCracken reveals Ms Harris’s four-times-paternal-great-grandfather Hamilton Brown was born in Co Antrim in 1776, the year of the US Declaration of Independence.
Brown emigrated to Jamaica, then a British colony, and became an enthusiastic slave owner on the sugar plantations that were the mainstay of the island’s economy. He opposed the abolition of slavery across the British Empire in 1832 and went to Antrim to replace his slaves with workers from his native county.
He gave his name to Brown’s Town in Jamaica and is buried in the interior of St Mark’s Anglican Church, which he built with his own money. Brown was pro-slavery and hated the British abolitionist William Wilberforce who brought in a Slave Registry Bill to stop the trading of slaves between different islands in the Caribbean. Brown called him “cloven footed” and a hypocrite.
Brown received almost €11 million in modern money in compensation from the British government for his slaves, according to records held by University College London (UCL).
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