Is it historically accurate for Yorùbá ancestry to be the highest in an African American family from Louisiana and Mississippi?

I’m African American, and my DNA results (from AncestryDNA, Living DNA, and GEDmatch) consistently show that Yorùbá is my highest West African ancestry—around 16–17%. My family has deep roots in Mississippi and Louisiana, and I’ve always read that many enslaved people in Louisiana came from the Kongo-Angola region, or were labeled as “Mina” (Ewe/Fon).

Given the history of the transatlantic slave trade and internal slave migrations in the U.S., is it historically accurate or plausible for someone from this region to have Yorùbá as their most dominant African ancestry?

Was Yorùbá ancestry especially common in the Gulf South or in Mississippi via the domestic slave trade? Or is this more of a reflection of genetic similarity between ethnic groups that DNA companies group together?

Would love insight based on the historical context of the transatlantic and intra-American slave trades.

Posted Apr 14, 2025, 9:25 PM UTC

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