Report: Al Sharpton's ancestors were slaves owned by Thurmond relatives

NEW YORK -- Civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton's great-grandfather was a slave owned by relatives of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, a newspaper reported.

Genealogists working at The Daily News' behest recently uncovered the ancestral ties between one of the nation's best known black leaders and a man who was once a prominent defender of segregation.

According to the newspaper, the genealogists found documents establishing that Sharpton's great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather. Coleman Sharpton was later freed.

"It was probably the most shocking thing in my life," Sharpton said at a news conference Sunday, the same day the tabloid revealed the story.

Sharpton said he met Thurmond only once in 1991 when he visited Washington, D.C. Sharpton said the meeting was "awkward."

"I was not happy to meet him because what he had done all his life," Sharpton said.

Strom Thurmond, of South Carolina, was once considered a symbol of segregation. During his 1948 bid for president, he promised to preserve racial segregation. In 1957, he filibustered for more than 24 hours against a civil rights bill.

But Thurmond was seen as softening his stance later in his long life. He died in 2003, at 100. The longest-serving senator in history, he was originally a Democrat but became a Republican in 1964.