The ancestry is seriously complicated. But it seems that his "stepfather" as well as his "assumed" Father were descended from the same enslaved woman. It seems the book has been out for some time, but this is the first that I've heard of it. Genealogy is my hobby and I find family research fascinating.
But the stories that Millie McGhee uncovers about plantation life makes the Jefferson/Hemmings story seem like Disney World.
http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/hoover_fbi.htm
A new book entitled Secrets Uncovered, J Edgar Hoover - Passing For White? has been published revealing that J Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI for most of its early history from 1924 until his death in 1972, had black ancestors. The author, Millie McGhee is an African-American who says she was told as a little girl in McComb, Mississippi, USA, of her familles links with Hoover, described by the author Edward Spannaus, his article The Mysterious Origins of J. Edgar Hoover as "one of the most virulent racists to hold a top government position" in the USA in the 20th century.
She says that her grandfather told of her of a "very powerful" man in Washington who was related to the family but did not want the links to be known and passed himself off as white. She reveals in her book that this man was Hoover, who was born in 1895, was apparently anxious that no one should know of his black origins.
McGhee, a former teacher in Los Angeles, contacted a genealogist in Salt Lake City, Utah, for help in tracing her family's history back over 200 years. Her research shows that Hoover's grandfather and great-grandfather lived in a segregated black area of Washington and were once classified in a census as "coloured". In the search of census records into the family of his father, Dickerson Naylor Hoover (who died in 1921 after a long illness) both the Hoover and Naylor families were living in areas of Washington D.C. - then itself a mostly segregated city - where blacks and whites were listed as living in close proximity. Some of the white Hoover families had blacks living with them, not as servants, but blacks being of the same occupation, such as "butcher'' or "clerk.'' There are also alterations and other oddities in a number of the Hoover family census records, and also in the racial listings which were then included in census records.
According to McGhee, her relatives were warned of "dire consequences" if they spoke publicly of his background. She said that as a little girl she believed that they would be killed if they mentioned the secret.
"Is this man so ashamed of his race that he would spend his whole life passing for white? . . . How has our race offended him ?"
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