Blog Archives

Science May Enable Reparations

Posted on February 17, 2016 by prinnyanderson — 2 Comments

Reviewing a Book Review A few days ago, I got an email from a friend who has become a leader in the field of researching African American family histories, up to and beyond the “brick walls” of slave lists that…

Tagged with: African Americans, Alondra Nelson, Ancestors, DNA, genealogy, Reparations, Sharon Morgan, The Social Life of DNA
Posted in Ancestry, Discovery & Personal Reactions, Historic Harms, Research Adventures

Repairing the Breach of Slavery

Posted on February 10, 2016 by prinnyanderson — 2 Comments

What Linked Descendants Say About Making Connections Across the Divide Reflections provided by participants of the December 2015 Coming to the Table conference call. Post co-authored by Sharon Morgan, Our Black Ancestry, and Prinny Anderson, Linked Descendants. If you could…

Tagged with: African Americans, archival records, Coming to the Table, Connections, families, family history, genealogy, linked descendants
Posted in "Side" & Linked Families, Connecting Across Families, Discovery & Personal Reactions, Linked Descendants

Moved to Tears

Posted on February 3, 2014 by dionneford — 1 Comment

When I read Gayle Jessup White’s essay in a recent post on “The Root,” I had such strong identification with it that I was moved to tears: Like most African Americans, oral history is my primary source for deep family…

Tagged with: Coming to the Table, families, genealogy, linked descendants, slaveholding, Slavery, Virginia
Posted in Racism

Part I: Facing Slavery and Finding Amanda

Posted on January 28, 2014 by eannneel — 2 Comments

This post is the first of three pieces on 1) how I discovered slavery in my heritage, specifically focusing on a woman named Amanda owned by my ancestor Thomas Jackson and his second wife Courtney Robertson; 2) what more that official…

Tagged with: 1790, 1830s-1870s, 1850 Census, African Americans, Amanda, appraisal, archival records, artifacts, “abroad” partner, “Little Dixie”, “master”, “mulatto”, “prime males”, “success”, Big House, birth, body, Border states, California, capitalist system, children, Civil War, colonized, commitment, commodities, complicit, dependency, digitized, document, dollars, dominance, economic cornerstone, economic gain, Enslavement, exploitation, expropriation, families, family history, farming families, genealogy, generations, heritage, households, identity, intestate “head of household”, intimacy, inventory, irony, Jackson family, Jennifer Morgan, linked descendants, market, microfilm, Missouri, moral crime, names, non-slaveholding, nursing, obituaries, official records, parenthood, patriarchal system, Population Schedule, power, private property, profit, Randolph County, raped., saleable human beings, same-sex, shame, shoebox, slave market, Slave Schedule, slaveholding, social bondage, sociology, status quo, U.S. Census, white domination, white privelege, Women Studies, women’s lives
Posted in Ancestry, Contemporary (1970- present), Discovery & Personal Reactions, Intimacy & Family Life, Legacies, Linked Descendants, Racism, Slaveholding (1780 -1865)

Bittersweet Memories

Posted on November 9, 2013 by Sharon Leslie Morgan — 12 Comments

When I was a small child, there was an old woman I remember seeing when we visited my grandfather’s house on the Southside of Chicago. She was extremely quiet, very tall (although slumped with age), with light brown skin and…

Tagged with: Alabama, Coming to the Table, genealogy, Leslie family
Posted in Ancestry, Discovery & Personal Reactions, Enslaved People, Historic Harms, Legacies, Linked Descendants, North America, Racism, Regions, Slaveholding (1780 -1865), Slavery, Status, The Journey