Mingus's ethnic background was complex. His ancestry included German American, African American, and Native American heritage.Santoro, 2000 His maternal grandfather was a Chinese British subject from Hong Kong, and his maternal grandmother was an African American from the southern United States. Mingus was the great-great-great-grandson of his family's founding patriarch who, by most accounts, was a German immigrant. In Mingus's autobiography Beneath the Underdog, his mother was described as "the daughter of an English/Chinese man and a South-American woman", and his father was the son "of a black farm worker and a Swedish woman". Charles Mingus Sr. claims to have been raised by his mother and her husband as a white person until he was fourteen, when his mother revealed to her family that the child's true father was a black slave, after which he had to run away from his family and live on his own. The autobiography does not confirm whether Charles Mingus Sr. or Mingus himself believed this story was true, or whether it was merely an embellished version of the Mingus family's lineage. According to new information used to educate visitors to Mingus Mill in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, included in signs unveiled May 23, 2023, the father of Mingus Sr. was former slave Daniel Mingus, owned by the family of his mother Clarinda Mingus, a white woman. When Clarinda married a white man, Mingus Sr. was left with his white grandfather and great-grandparents. His father, who later changed his name to West, apparently did not have a relationship with Mingus Sr.
Mingus's ethnic background was complex. His ancestry included German American, African American, and Native American heritage.Santoro, 2000 His maternal grandfather ,was a Chinese British subject from Hong Kong, and his maternal grandmother was an African American from the southern United States. Mingus was the great-great-great-grandson of his family's founding patriarch who, by most accounts, was a German immigrant. In Mingus's autobiography Beneath the Underdog, his mother was described as "the daughter of an English/Chinese man and a South-American woman", and his father was the son "of a black farm worker and a Swedish woman". Charles Mingus Sr. claims to have been raised by his mother and her husband as a white person until he was fourteen, when his mother revealed to her family that the child's true father was a black slave, after which he had to run away from his family and live on his own. The autobiography does not confirm whether Charles Mingus Sr. or Mingus himself believed this story was true, or whether it was merely an embellished version of the Mingus family's lineage. According to new information used to educate visitors to Mingus Mill in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, included in signs unveiled May 23, 2023, the father of Mingus Sr. was former slave Daniel Mingus, owned by the family of his mother Clarinda Mingus, a white woman. When Clarinda married a white man Mingus Sr. was left with his white grandfather and great-grandparents. His father, who later changed his name to West, apparently did not have a relationship with Mingus Sr.