Tim Scott will deliver GOP response to Biden so WAPO fact checks his ancestral blackness

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@GlennKesslerWP

Sen. TIm Scott will give the GOP response to Biden. But there’s more to the story of his grandfather than he tells audiences.

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For Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, it’s the story of his grandfather, Artis Ware, who left school at an early age to pick cotton and, according to Scott, never learned to read and write. The tale of his grandfather fits in with a narrative of Scott moving up from humble circumstances to reach a position of political power in the U.S. Senate.

But Scott separately has acknowledged that his great-great-grandfather, Lawrence Ware, once owned 900 acres in South Carolina.

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Our research reveals a more complex story than what Scott tells audiences. Scott’s grandfather’s father was also a substantial landowner — and Scott’s grandfather, Artis Ware, worked on that farm. Scott’s family history in South Carolina offers a fascinating window into a little-known aspect of history in the racist South following the Civil War and in the immediate aftermath of slavery — that some enterprising Black families purchased property as a way to avoid sharecropping and achieve a measure of independence from White-dominated society

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The Pinocchio Test

Scott’s “cotton to Congress” line is missing some nuance, but we are not going to rate his statements. To some extent, Scott may be relying on the memories of his grandfather, not a detailed examination of records.

Scott tells a tidy story packaged for political consumption, but a close look shows how some of his family’s early and improbable success gets flattened and written out of his biography. Against heavy odds, Scott’s ancestors amassed relatively large areas of farmland, a mark of distinction in the Black community at the time. Scott, moreover, does not mention that his grandfather worked on his father’s farm — a farm that was expanded through land acquisitions even during the Great Depression, when many other Black farmers were forced out of business.

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