HuffPost Black Voices reports:

“Ava DuVernay shared a powerful photo on Twitter Saturday morning — honoring the progress African-Americans have made throughout the history of the United States.

“Become your ancestor’s wildest dream,” the “Selma” director tweeted, attaching a photo of a memorial that pays tribute to one of former first lady Michelle Obama’s ancestors, Melvinia Shields, who was a slave.

“She was born a slave in South Carolina in 1844,” the memorial inscription reads. Obama was born in 1964, 120 years after her great-great-great-grandmother.

Shields is buried elsewhere in Georgia, but the memorial stands in Rex, a community outside of Atlanta, where she worked as a slave on a farm, a struggle referenced on the memorial.

“At age 6 she was brought to the nearby Shields farm in what is now Rex, Clayton County, Georgia,” states the inscription on the memorial, which was dedicated in 2014, according to The Rome News-Tribune.

“Her family would endure a five-generation journey that began in oppression and would lead her descendent to become first lady of the United States of America, Michelle Obama,” the inscription continues. “Theirs is a story of hope.””

Read the rest: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5985f7a3e4b08b75dcc7462e

[Editor’s Note: “Become your ancestor’s wildest dream” is also a reference to a phrase New Orleans artist B. Mike Odums uses often in his work: “I am my ancestor’s wildest dream.” For more: http://brandanodums.com/project/studio-be/]