Radical black activist Angela Davis was visibly shocked when she learned that she was a descendant of the pilgrims on the Mayflower.

The self-avowed Marxist feminist and former black power activist in the 1970s appeared as a guest on the PBS series “Finding Your Roots” Tuesday. During her interview, host Henry Louis Gates, Jr. revealed that she is a descendant of one of the original passengers on the Mayflower, William Brewster.

Gates shared a clip of the segment on Twitter. “Any idea what you’re looking at?” he asks. “That is a list of the passengers on the Mayflower.”

Davis is in complete astonishment. “No, I can’t believe this,” she says, laughing and throwing her hands up. “No, my ancestors did not come here on the Mayflower,” she laughs again.

“Your ancestors came here on the Mayflower,” Gates repeats. “You are descended from one of the 101 people who sailed on the Mayflower.”

“No. No, no, no, no,” she responds, still laughing in disbelief. Finally, she collects herself. “Oof. That’s a little bit too much to deal with right now,” she says.

“Do you know what you’re looking at? That is a list of the passengers on the Mayflower.”

Our researchers discovered #AngelaDavis’s ancestors traveled to the US on the Mayflower and here is her reaction. #FindingYourRoots pic.twitter.com/G2HhA9BSrT

— Henry Louis Gates Jr (@HenryLouisGates) February 22, 2023

According to the episode, Davis’s father, Frank Davis, was legally the son of Mollie Spencer and Edward Davis. But Edward Davis was not his biological father; Spencer and Davis separated before he was born. Instead, Frank Davis was the son of Mollie Spencer and another white man named Murphy Jones. Experts were able to map Davis’s family line through Jones all the way back to William Brewster, an original signer of the Mayflower Compact and a leader of the Plymouth Colony.

Also in the episode, Davis’s maternal grandfather was a white Alabama lawyer and state legislator named John Austin Darden. Through Darden, she is the descendant of a man named Stephen Darden, a drummer born in Virginia who served in the Revolutionary War. Darden then moved to Georgia, where he owned a farm and at least 6 slaves.

“I always imagined my ancestors as the people who were enslaved,” Davis said. “My mind and my heart are swirling with all of these contradictory emotions.”

Davis has been a radical race activist for more than the last half-century. She began her instruction in Marxism from the time she began studying at Brandeis University. She became a student of the radical left-wing philosopher Herbert Marcuse, and also studied the work of the Marxist Jean-Paul Sartre. A member of both the Communist Party USA and the Black Panther Party, she spoke in Communist Cuba, the Soviet Union, and East Germany. She has also had a long career in academia, beginning as a professor at UCLA in 1969 and has taught at San Francisco State, UC Santa Cruz, Rutgers University, and Syracuse University. She also ran for Vice President as a member of the Communist Party in 1980 and 1984.

Davis, 79, has continued her career promoting radical politics. In 2011, she spoke at Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in Philadelphia. She was an honorary co-chair of the first Women’s March in 2017. She has called for the abolition of prisons, and in a 2017 op-ed, she called for the abolition of the police “in the age of Trump.” She is also a family friend of Jussie Smollett. Her works on race and gender have also been featured in college courses, and lately, in the AP African-American Studies class that was banned by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis this year.

Rare gold jewelry that dates all the way back to the 9th century has been returned to Cambodia, the southeast Asian country’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts announced Monday. 

In this stash of jewels were 77 gold relics, including crowns, bracelets, and necklaces that were believed to be looted from burial grounds and ancient tombs. They are being returned to Cambodia from the collection of Douglas Latchford, a notorious British art dealer who has been accused of trafficking looted artifacts and had been indicted in the United States. 

“It was not in any published books. The issue now is the team here has to evaluate it and look at each piece,” Brad Gordon, legal advisor to the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts said. “It’s 77 objects altogether and the [National Museum of Cambodia] did not have much in terms of gold, so this is much more than it had in its possession.”

“I keep talking to Cambodians today who were taking a look at it, and they were just so excited. They were thrilled and surprised,” he added.

Researchers believe some of the artifacts were once worn by early Angkorian kings from the Khmer empire in the 9th century, which included Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and southern Vietnam. Some of the pieces include a gold necklace with a purple stone, a gold headdress, a gold belt or waistband, and a crown made from hammered gold, the New York Times reported. One thing all the items have in common is that they ended up in the possession of Latchford. 

Cambodian researchers say they believe some of the gold adorned the earliest Angkorian kings, who founded the Khmer Empire and built its majestic temples.

📷Cambodia Ministry of culture and fine arts. https://t.co/Bax4fMbRbE pic.twitter.com/QCoQuiyD8l

— Ticia Verveer (@ticiaverveer) February 22, 2023

The lootings likely took place between the 1970s and 2000s. The 1970s was a period of great turmoil under the communist rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979. During these years, an estimated 1.7 to 2.2 million Cambodians died in what’s known as the Cambodian Genocide. 

In November 2018, Latchford was indicted on charges of wire fraud conspiracy and crimes related to the trafficking and looting of Cambodian antiquities, which he denied, the Associated Press notes. Officials from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York claimed that Latchford “built a career out of the smuggling and illicit sale of priceless Cambodian antiquities.” Upon his death in August 2020 at the age of 88, the indictment was dismissed. 

Latchford’s daughter made an agreement with Cambodia in September 2020, a month after her father’s death, to return various items. This jewelry, some of which was in a London warehouse, was part of that deal. Many artifacts had been returned in 2021. Additional items that have been returned to Cambodia come from the Denver Art Museum and other artifacts from the United States by their respective owners, likely because of their connection to Latchford. While some of these actions were voluntary, others were court-ordered, according to the AP. 

Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts secretary told the Times receiving these important artifacts was “getting back the crown jewels of the Angkor Empire.” He also claimed that Cambodia didn’t know many of the items even existed, adding “This is much more than what is in our museum.”