The Rev. Al Sharpton, one of America's most vocal civil rights activists, learned this week that his ancestors were once owned by relatives of the late segregationist South Carolina Senator, Strom Thurmond. For the Rev. Sharpton it was an ironic twist of fate that so closely links his fate with that of a man who "embodied everything he despises," according to the article in the New York Daily News.

As part of an effort to publicize its extensive collection of African American genealogy records, genealogists from Ancestry.com, lead by Chief Family Historian Megan Smolenyak, spent two weeks following the paper trail of Reverend Sharpton's ancestors, to his paternal great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton. Coleman was a slave in Edgefield County, South Carolina, when he was sent by his white owner, Alexander Sharpton, to Florida in 1861 to work for his son's widow, Julia Thurmond Sharpton to help pay off the debts of her husband's estate. Julia Thurmond's grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather, making her Strom Thurmond's first cousin twice removed. If you're confused by the similar names, Coleman Sharpton took his surname from his white owner -- a common practice among slaves.

"In the story of the Thurmonds and the Sharptons is the story of the shame and the glory of America," Mr. Sharpton said at a news conference at The Daily News yesterday.

"The shame is that people were owned as property, and the shame is that I'm the heir of those who were property to the Thurmond family," he said. "The glory is that Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948 on a segregationist ticket; I ran in ’04 on a ticket for racial justice, and that shows what America can become, if you’re determined to beat discrimination."

Rev. Al Sharpton now plans to take a DNA ancestry test to learn whether he might also be related by blood to the white Thurmond and Sharpton families that once owned his ancestors.