'Spiritual cult' leader Rashad Jamal also spreads disinformation about slavery | Fact check

Ma’Kayla Wickerson, 25, poses for a photo. Wickerson, her 3-year-old daughter Malaiyah Wickerson, as well as four other people, have been missing since August, when they were last seen at a hotel in Florissant, a city in St. Louis County, Missouri. Each of the adults who vanished are involved in what police have described as a “spiritual cult” ran by a convicted child molester.

Six people, including two young children, remain missing after they joined what police called a “spiritual cult” led by a convicted child molester – who is also a fervent spreader of online disinformation.

Rashad Jamal, who is serving an 18-year prison sentence in Georgia for child molestation and cruelty to children, built up a following of more than 200,000 people through a YouTube channel called “The University of Cosmic Intelligence.” Jamal’s videos include false claims about weather control, a conspiracy theory that the government is run by a cabal of reptiles, and misinformation about the racial identity of people of color.

Jamal has also claimed that Black Americans are not descendants of Africans. Rather, he claims, they are the “true Native Americans.”

Start the day smarter. Get all the news you need in your inbox each morning.

The claim: Black Americans aren’t descended from Africans kidnapped into slavery

A Facebook user shared one of Jamal’s videos in a Nov. 18, 2023, post (direct link, archive link). The video shows him making other proclamations about Black Americans and the transatlantic slave trade.

“If you’re an African American, what African connects with you?” Jamal asks. “If we really came from Africa they would’ve hopped on them ships and came over and got (us) a long time ago.”

Jamal further asks how thousands of Africans could have been captured in the slave trade, chained and put onto ships by a small number of white men with only a few rifles and whips.

The Facebook video was shared more than 900 times in two months. Versions of the video were also shared on TikTok.

More from the Fact-Check Team: How we pick and research claims | Email newsletter | Facebook page

Our rating: False

There is overwhelming evidence from genetic science and historical records that the majority of Black Americans are descendants of Africans. Records and artifacts prove Africans were kidnapped and enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade.

Black Americans’ racial identity proven by DNA, historical evidence

Many Black Americans have confirmed their ancestry through genetic testing. In a July 2020 study, the American Journal of Human Genetics investigated the links between kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their American descendants. More than 50,000 participants had their DNA tested by companies like 23andMe, and researchers compared those results with historical shipping documents from the transatlantic slave trade.

“We found that, overall, genetic evidence of Atlantic African ancestry across the Americas is consistent with historical documents of the transatlantic shipping of enslaved Africans,” the researchers wrote in the study. “The highest proportion of (identity by descent) is found between West Central Africa and the Americas, consistent with the highest proportion of enslaved embarkation from the slave trading region.”

Black American families have also traced their lineage through historical records. The William Tucker Society, for example, is comprised of a family descended from two of the first Africans brought to the Americas. They used historical records as well as DNA testing to prove their lineage.

Fact check: No, no hay una nueva ley que cancele $15,000 en deudas de tarjetas de crédito

Jamal questioned how a small group of Europeans could have kidnapped thousands of Africans. The Library of Congress states that although European traders owned and operated slave ships, most of the kidnapping of African people was done by other Africans who sold them to Europeans and Americans.

The Bill of Rights Institute wrote that Africans could be enslaved in their native countries as punishment for committing a crime or for having unpaid debts. Yet the most common source of slavery, according to the institute, was “the taking of war captives by an enemy tribe or state.”

The Equal Justice Initiative explained how the kidnappings took place:

“African kidnappers traveled inland and kidnapped people from their villages and towns. In the 18th century, 70% of Africans trafficked in the Transatlantic Slave Trade were free people who had been ‘snatched from their homes and communities.’ They were most often forced to walk, bound together in a coffle

The transatlantic slave trade was well documented through letters such as a six-year correspondence between a slave merchant and his employee, ship manifests that list the names and genders of captured African people, and artifacts from the slave ships themselves. In 2019, remnants of the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to dock in the U.S., were found in the Mobile River in Alabama.

USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

PolitiFact debunked a similar claim.

Our fact-check sources:

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or e-newspaper here.

USA TODAY is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, which requires a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisanship, fairness and transparency. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Meta.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ‘Spiritual cult’ leader Rashad Jamal also spreads disinformation about slavery | Fact check