NY Times Letter To the Editor

My how times have changed! In Edna Ferber's Showboat, and the plays and films based on it, the singer Julie had to leave the Cotton Blossom because she had a drop of "colored" blood. Today Elizabeth Warren is under fire for claiming to be 1/32 Native American, five generations removed by my calculation. It makes one marvel at the gullibility of the media in accepting the validity of the "Mayflower Madame," unless there is a strain of pilgrims that has kept its lineage unadulterated since Plymouth Rock, a period that had to span many more than five generations?