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Statue of a man reading to children: the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial, Annapolis, Maryland.

Black Genealogy After Alex Haley’s Roots

"A lot has been hidden from Black Americans. And so there is always a longing to know who you are and where you come from.”
Detail of faces on a family tree.

The Pocahontas Exception: America’s Ancestor Obsession

The ‘methods and collections’ of genealogists are political because they have a great deal in common with genealogy as a way of doing history.
Photos of children from the cover of "The Crisis," 1916

‘Anxious for a Mayflower’

In "A Nation of Descendants," Francesca Morgan traces the American use and abuse of genealogy from the Daughters of the American Revolution to Roots.
James Dent Walker.

A Major Group of Family Genealogists Apologizes For Past Racism

The National Genealogical Society is one of the oldest, largest groups dedicated to helping families trace their ancestries.
John H. Smith (left), mayor of Prichard, Alabama, unsuccessfully campaigned for the creation of an Africatown national park.

The Forgotten 1980s Battle to Preserve Africatown

A new book tells the definitive history of an Alabama community founded by survivors of the slave trade.
Artwork of trees with multicolored roots.

Yearning for Roots

We're born with a hunger for connection with our ancestors – both biological and spiritual.
Left: stacks of The 1619 Project books; right: Daryl Michael Scott.

Grievance History

Historian Daryl Scott weighs in on the 1619 Project and the "possibility that we rend ourselves on the question of race."
Painting of a couple kissing under a broomstick

Broomstick Weddings and the History of the Atlantic World

From Kentucky to Wales and all across the Atlantic, the enslaved and downtrodden got married – by leaping over a broom. Why?

Where Were You in ‘73?

In the turbulent 1970s, the balm of pop cultural nostalgia set the tone for today's political reaction.

Myth of Black Confederates Won't Go Away

Two South Carolina lawmakers dust off a familiar trope in an attempt to fight back against Confederate monument removals.

American Slavery: Separating Fact From Myth

Before we can face slavery, learn about it and acknowledge its significance to American history, we must dispel the myths surrounding it.
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Black History Month

What does Black History Month leave out?

A DNA Test Won’t Explain Elizabeth Warren’s Ancestry

You’re not 28 percent Finnish, either.

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