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To Mark the 55th Anniversary of 'Bloody Sunday,' the Film Selma Is Being Used to Teach a New Generation About Protecting the Right to Vote
When it comes to spurring Oklahoma to grapple with a century-old race massacre that schoolbooks had left behind, much of the credit is due to an unlikely historical resource: HBO. For 99 years, Oklahoma had failed to reckon with the 1921 Tulsa massacre in which white residents torched and carpet bombed the city’s black community,…
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Tracing Your Roots: Who Left My Mother in Foster Care?
After five wonderful, fun years of helping African Americans find their ancestry on The Root, we are looking forward to carrying on the work of the Tracing Your Roots column through an ongoing collaboration with AmericanAncestors.org by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Our new column will appear on AmericanAncestors.org and the related blog Vita-Brevis.org.…
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Tracing Your Roots: Where Were My Black Homeowning Ancestors From?
Records reveal a proud legacy in Mississippi, yet data shows why we should not be all that surprised. Dear Professor Gates: My great-great-grandparents were George Derden (or Durton) and Beatrice Derden. My great-grandmother Christine was one of their daughters. I was told by my grandmother that my great-great-grandfather owned land or his own house in…
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Tracing Your Roots: Help! My Great-Granddad’s Trail Ran Cold
Sometimes, following the paper trail left by a close relative of the person you’re tracing will yield better results. Dear Professor Gates: I have been looking for the father of my great-grandfather George Washington Bridges, born in 1875 in Georgia. I have located records placing him in Butts County, Ga. One of the census records…
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Tracing Your Roots: Why Did My Family Bury the Past?
Silence shrouded information about a family’s past, and those who could provide answers are deceased. Fortunately, there’s a paper trail. Dear Professor Gates: No one in my family would talk about our past, so it basically died with my great-great-aunts. Our family is from Robeson County, N.C.—mainly St. Pauls, in the Kintuck area—and my ancestors…
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Tracing Your Roots: My Ancestor Was in Her Half Sister’s Dowry
Families intertwine and seemingly pass back and forth over the color line, complicating efforts to trace their origins. Dear Professor Gates: I would like to know more about my great-great-great-grandmother Melinda Day (1824-1890), who was born into slavery and became part of the dowry of her half sister Susannah Whittington from Georgia. One of Melinda’s…
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Tracing Your Roots: Who Were Our Kin Before Tragedy Struck the Family?
Needing answers after a family was torn asunder by fatal acts of domestic violence. Dear Professor Gates: My sister Yahnique Sparks and I are having trouble finding information on our parents, Joseph Shirley Sparks and Ruby Lee Sparks (maiden name Johnson). They both died in 1981 when I was a child. Our mother perished at…
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Tracing Your Roots: My Adopted Black Daughter Wants to Know Her Origins
A white mother and black daughter encounter the genealogical “brick wall” so many people face while researching African-American families during slavery. Dear Professor Gates: I have worked very hard to trace back the ancestry of my adopted daughter Rasa Braswell, who is African American. (I am Caucasian.) However, I hit a snag once I got…
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Tracing Your Roots: Did Racism Force My Ancestors to Hide Their Love?
Family lore about a great-grandparent’s interracial relationship lines up with clues in census records. Dear Professor Gates: My paternal grandmother, Caroline “Carrie” Fogg Farrar, was from Raleigh, N.C. She was a product of a relationship between her mother, Mary Elizabeth Fogg (who we had been told was 100 percent Cherokee), and a white landowner named…
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Tracing Your Roots: When Was My ‘Freedman’ Ancestor Freed?
A message board posting listing “freedmen” kin raises questions. Dear Professor Gates: My parents are no longer around to provide answers that will help me to trace my roots, so I hope you can help me. I have traced my father all the way back to my great-great-grandfather and great-great-grandmother, Hilliard (Hill) and Angaline (Angeline)…
