It's Time to Return the Ancestors America Enslaved
It's Past Time...Will You Help?
Slavery, Jim Crow laws, and continued racism have forced Black American families apart for generations
Family tree research should’t be this hard.
But it currently is!
- Denied access to records because of skin tone
- Families skipped during census enumerations
- Records destroyed to hide the truth
- Family members scattered due to slave sales
- To name a few barriers …
Families have been told for generations they can’t have a full family tree because of slavery. They’ve been told either not to bother or just give up.
Let’s send the message that they can have a full tree and they should never give up.
Together We Can Make a Difference
With your help, we can build a family tree for every American descended from the slaves who gave their sweat, blood, and tears to build our country.
Let's Connect Black Americans to Their Family Story
Sankofa means to go back
and retrieve what has been forgotten.
You must look at the past
to build the best future.
Let’s go back to celebrate
and honor those who came before.
What is Black American/African-American Family Tree Transformation?
Lives are transformed by using genealogy research to create accurate and complete family trees that connect descendants to enslaved ancestors and to their family story.
How Is It Done?
After I painstakingly research documents, study entire communities, and build private trees, I migrate that information to WikiTree. This allows the information to be made publicly and freely available to descendants and to be preserved for future generations. When the descendants become members of WikiTree, they can quickly and easily connect to the existing family profiles.
Where Is It Done?
I help lead WikiTree’s US Black Heritage Project and place all my research information on the website. Because of WikiTree’s One World Tree concept (one shared profile for every person who ever existed), we are able to easily collaborate on and share resources for the family trees we reconstruct. The project is a “one-stop-shop” where members process ALL documents rather than select types or select locations. We work with documents for those with Black heritage across all times in U.S. history in order to create bridges between post Civil War families and pre Civil War families. This work is made available for free to all descendants.
Why Should It Be Done?
Slavery, Jim Crow Laws, and continued racism have forced Black families apart for generations.
Imagine being enslaved and having your children sold away from you, never to be seen again. Imagine being freed from slavery, but given no resources with which to keep your family fed and housed. Imagine having to move away from the only home you have ever known because the ku klux klan is persecuting your family because you have the “wrong” skin color. These are only a few examples when families have had to make hard choices merely to survive.
After the murder of George Floyd and the escalation of race riots, I became distressed over how I—only one single person—could possibly make any kind of change regarding racism in the USA. I kept thinking, if every citizen of the USA would do their part, we could overcome this, right? But how could I do my part? I realized the largest and most powerful tool in my pocket was genealogy. US Black family tree reconstruction is a part of balancing the scales for the Black community by returning the family and past history to them that should have never been taken in the first place.
Goals:
- To reconstruct US Black families torn apart by slavery, Jim Crow laws, and racism.
- To build the largest, free, accurate, and publicly available database of connected Black family trees so every family has a place to start their own tree.
- To promote Black genealogy and give descendants tools to build their own extensive trees.
- To document all 10+ million enslaved ancestors and connect them to their descendants in the connected family tree.
- To build a healing bridge through genealogy between descendants of those who held slaves and descendants of those who were enslaved.
- In 2022, to increase the database at WikiTree to 150,000 family profiles, at least 20,000 of those being enslaved ancestors. (goal was met! New goal for 2023 is 250,000)
- To do this work full time to help heal as many family trees as possible during the remainder of my lifetime.
How Can You Help?
- If you are the descendant of a slave owner, when you come across information of those they enslaved, share it on your family profiles. Add that information to WikiTree’s growing database using the US Black Heritage Project’s methods for documentation.
- If a descendant of one of the slaves your family held reaches out to you for information, please promptly answer their request, even if you only have a little information.
- Donate funds to support more research hours and purchase of documents by clicking the “Donate” button below. 100% of donations will go to these two things. (Please Note: Although I am currently working to set up a nonprofit for this cause, donations are currently not tax deductible. When you make a donation, your email address will be captured by PayPal. I will only use this to send monthly reports on how donations were spent and the progress of the work.)
Yes, I want to help connect every enslaved American to their descendants!
US Black Heritage Project Accomplishments
as of June 21, 2023
- 215,168 African American family profiles created and counting!
- Of the total above, 38,993 of them are enslaved ancestor profiles and 7753 were free during slavery
- 1537 African-American cemeteries documented
- 325 Plantations documented
- Almost 4000 notable Black Americans documented