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A Black person points to Neshoba county on a map of Mississippi.

The Lynching That Sent My Family North

How we rediscovered the tragedy in Mississippi that ushered us into the Great Migration.
by Ko Bragg via The Atlantic on May 20, 2024
Collage of plantation logbooks superimposed over photos of enslaved people.

A Racist Scientist Commissioned Photos of Enslaved People. One Descendant Wants to Reclaim Them.

There's no clear system in place to repatriate remains of captive Africans or objects associated with them.
by Jennifer Berry Hawes via ProPublica on October 9, 2023
An enslaved African American family or families posing in front of a wooden house on a plantation

10 Million Enslaved Americans' Names are Missing from History. AI is Helping Identify Them.

When journalist Dorothy Tucker first learned about the 10 Million Names genealogical project, it helped amplify memories of long car journeys to “Down South."
by Rachel Jones via National Geographic on August 31, 2023
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.
by Sydney Trent via Retropolis on May 31, 2023
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.”
by Menika Dirkson via Black Perspectives on June 17, 2022
A former slave cabin, surrounded by tourists.

‘These Are Our Ancestors’: Descendants of Enslaved People Are Shifting Plantation Tourism

At three plantations in Charleston, S.C., Black descendants are connecting with their family’s history and helping reshape the narrative.
by Ariel Felton via Retropolis on October 1, 2021
Photographs of Kim Lee Finger and Michelle Brooks

Two Women Researched Slavery in Their Family. They Didn’t See the Same Story.

Trying to learn more about a woman named Ann led her descendants to confront a painful past; ‘I just wanted to know the truth.’
by Amy Dockser Marcus via The Wall Street Journal on April 16, 2021
Photograph of a former slave interviewed by the Federal Writers' Projects

Stories of Slavery, From Those Who Survived It

The Federal Writers’ Project narratives provide an all-too-rare link to our past.
by Clint Smith via The Atlantic on February 9, 2021
Depiction of a woman in a tree, looking down with a thoughtful expression.

Roots to Fruits

Meditations on when you think you found the people who owned your people via DNA test.
by Mariah-Rose Marie M via The Nib on February 1, 2021
Lithograph of William Costin.

The Mount Vernon Slave Who Made Good: The Mystery of William Costin

David O. Stewart discusses the relationship between William Costin and the Washington bloodline.
by David O. Stewart via Journal of the American Revolution on December 22, 2020
African men in slave pens in Washington D.C. circa 1849-1850.
partner

How Ancestry.com Has Failed African American Customers

The genealogy site fails to understand the fundamental differences between white and black history.
by Kristen Green via Made By History on May 31, 2019
Illustration of birth certificate and coin necklace

Ghosts In My Blood

Regina Bradley searches for truths about her great-grandfather and his murder.
by Regina Bradley via Southern Cultures on April 9, 2019
Drawing of a woman standing with blurred people behind her and computer text boxes pointing to her face.

Cracking the Code

It's impossible for most black Americans to construct full family trees, but genetic testing can provide some clues.
by Jesmyn Ward via The New Yorker on May 14, 2015
Portrait of a Black woman; artist unknown, American, circa 1830–1835.

In Search of the Real Hannah Crafts

"The Bondwoman’s Narrative" is the first novel by a Black woman to describe slavery from the inside. Recently, scholars have discovered her true identity.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on July 25, 2024

40 Acres and a Lie

We compiled Reconstruction-era documents to identify 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans given land—only to have it returned to their enslavers.
by Alexia Fernández Campbell, April Simpson, Pratheek Rebala via Mother Jones on June 13, 2024
Reenactment of a group of settlers on the Ellis Trail, walking through prairie grass beside horse-drawn wagons.

Nicodemus, Kansas: The Last All Black Town in the West

Descendants of the first settlers in Nicodemus are working to preserve and share a story of grit, perseverance, self-governance, and homecomings.
by Lane Wendell Fischer via The Daily Yonder on March 20, 2024
Two elderly Black women.

How the Memory of a Song Reunited Two Women Separated by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

In 1990, scholars found a Sierra Leonean woman who remembered a nearly identical version of a tune passed down by a Georgia woman’s enslaved ancestors
by Joshua Kagavi via Smithsonian on February 29, 2024
Jared Miller poses as his ancestor Richard Oliver, a soldier in the 20th Colored Infantry.

Descendants of Black Civil War Heroes Wear Their Heritage With Pride

A bold new photographic project asks modern-day Americans to recreate portraits of their 19th-century ancestors in painstakingly accurate fashion.
by Jennie Rothenburg Gritz via Smithsonian on December 13, 2023
Collage of Black woman and marriage certificate.

Why Is America Afraid of Black History?

No one should fear a history that asks a country to live up to its highest ideals.
by Lonnie G. Bunch III via The Atlantic on November 13, 2023
Enslaved people working on South Carolina Plantation.

A Historian Complicates the Racial Divide

"African Founders" corrects some of the ideological uses of Black American history.
by Ken Masugi via Law & Liberty on November 8, 2023
For most of her 74 years, Ruth Ann Hills took a certain innocent pride in her family’s story and its place in Staten Island history. Generations of her family had resided in Mariners Harbor on the island’s North Shore. She and her brother David Thomas live in the house their grandfather built on Van Pelt Avenue. They had found Black ancestors on Staten Island as far back as the 1700s, and incredibly they had all eluded slavery. Or so Hills thought. All of that changed one day in 2021, when Hills received a visit from a filmmaker. Heather Quinlan was working on a documentary about a nearby graveyard. Over the course of her genealogical research, Quinlan had discovered that one of the people buried there was Hills’ great-great-great-grandfather. Neither Hills nor Thomas had ever heard of the man, Benjamin Prine, but his death in 1900 at the age of 106 had been covered by the New York Times and the wire services. Prine, a U.S. veteran of the War of 1812, had been the last enslaved person born on Staten Island, Quinlan told them. A photograph of a man, seated, holding a cane. The photograph has a long caption beneath, that is headlined "THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME." Hills' and Thomas' great-great-great-grandfather, Benjamin Prine. Staten Island Historical Society. Prine had once been enslaved by Peter Van Pelt, a highly influential Dutch Reformed Church minister – meaning that the street on which the siblings now live took its name from the same white family that enslaved their ancestor. “I thought I was a big history buff. ‘Oh, I know about history,’” Hills said. “I guess I was naive.” A crosswalk scene underneath two large street signs that both read "Van Pelt Av." The intersection of Van Pelt Avenue and Forest Avenue on Staten Island. Reece T. Williams/Gothamist

How the Remains of Formerly Enslaved People Came to Rest Beneath a Staten Island Strip Mall

Benjamin Prine's descendants didn’t know about their family ties – or their connection to his enslaver.
by Arun Venugopal via Gothamist on February 9, 2023
Various members of the Grimke family.

Bleeding Hearts and Blind Spots

What the story of the Grimke family tells us about race in the United States.
by Kellie Carter Jackson via The Nation on November 30, 2022
A courtroom or public civic room full of people, with white and black people sitting on opposite sides of a railing.

When Tribal Nations Expel Their Black Members

Clashes between sovereignty rights and civil rights reveal an uncomfortable and complicated story about race and belonging in America.
by Philip J. Deloria via The New Yorker on July 14, 2022
Troops from the 92nd Infantry Division move past a destroyed Mark VI tank on the outskirts of Ponsacco, Italy, on Sept. 1, 1944.

A Young WWII Soldier’s Remains Could Be Those of Spike Lee’s Lost Cousin

Military experts seeking to identify partial skeleton in an anonymous grave.
by Michael E. Ruane via Retropolis on June 28, 2022
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.
by Caroline Fraser via New York Review of Books on April 21, 2022
Illustration of a giant tree in a swamp

The Hidden and Eternal Spirit of the Great Dismal Swamp

For nearly all of its modern existence, the Great Dismal Swamp has been excluded from U.S. history. Now there’s a push to bring its significance to light.
by Lex Pryor via The Ringer on March 30, 2022
DNA strand.

Finding Our Roots? History and DNA

DNA tests have become popular tools to rediscover lost ties to the past, but the links they forge do not always stand up to historical scrutiny.
by James H. Sweet via Perspectives on History on March 22, 2022
Colorful graphic showing famous Black Americans

What’s In a Black Name? 400 Years of Context.

From Phillis Wheatley to Lil Uzi Vert, Black names and their evolution tell the story of America.
by Soraya Nadia McDonald via Andscape on March 1, 2022
A collage piece that includes photographs of African Americans at work and leisure.

Stories to Be Told

Unearthing the Black history in America’s national parks.
by Sahra Ali via Sierra Club on February 20, 2022
Black and white photograph of Lucille Clifton.

Lucille Clifton and the Task of Remembering

The poet’s memoir Generations is both a chronicle of her ancestral lineage and lesson in the centrality of Black women to the story of American history.
by Marina Magloire via The Nation on January 12, 2022
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