Emphasizing the difference between his heritage and the Jamaican one of fellow presidential hopeful Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker told a black audience that his roots “go back to slavery.”
Speaking at the “Bloody Sunday” commemorative service at a black church in Selma, Alabama, Booker said, ““We’ve got to remember we cannot handle the moral amnesia that forgets the roots that are in the soil that was poisoned with hatred and bigotry but still found root in the ground. We may be the fruits, but we cannot forget the roots. My roots go back to slavery. They rose up through poverty and segregation, hardship and pain. Rose up from black churches, through civil rights organizations, through [historically black colleges].”