On April 4, 1968, LIFE photographer Henry Groskinsky and writer Mike Silva, on assignment in Alabama, learned that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot at the...
Read moreBlack and white branches of McCain family tree share stories in Flint
It was a powerful image, one that told the centuries-old tale of a family with two races and one name. On a platform at Mott Community College on Tuesday night, two...
Read moreArchaeologist: Graves ‘always significant’
Archaeologist Carter Hudgins was scraping around in the dirt outside Drayton Hall’s old slave cemetery last fall, checking out the ground where they planned to...
Read moreIn Newport News, kids learn genealogy through storytelling
Preserving family history can mean more than safeguarding dusty photos and yellowed newspaper clippings. It can also mean holding onto your grandmother’s...
Read moreThe Historian Who Lived What He Taught
John Hope Franklin, who died yesterday at 94, was one of the most remarkable Americans of the 20th century. He was the master of the great American story of that...
Read moreNational Archives Hosts Fifth Genealogy Fair, April 22-23, 2009
The National Archives will host its fifth annual Genealogy Fair. This year’s two-day program will showcase Federal records located at the National Archives and...
Read moreFounded by slaves: A unique S.C. town
Lincolnville is the only South Carolina town founded by freed slaves and free blacks that still exists, as well as the only one named after Abraham Lincoln, the...
Read moreHistoric cemetery restored, dedicated
For years, the final resting place of two freed slaves and their descendants lay forgotten, covered by leaves and brush off of Old Mill Road in Ridgeway. After the...
Read moreBefore Rosa Parks, There Was Claudette Colvin
Few people know the story of Claudette Colvin: When she was 15, she refused to move to the back of the bus and give up her seat to a white person — nine months before...
Read moreGates keeps going back to roots
On the heels of a successful PBS series documenting the ancestry of 19 African-Americans, Harvard professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates has published a book...
Read moreCase Study: Two Negro Boys Named Elijah and Frank: The Search for My Slave Roots
Initially my motives were less than noble—I wanted money for school. Because my family’s oral history claimed that we descended from Cherokee Indians, I thought that...
Read moreAfriquest, the Free Online Database for African And African American Genealogy, to Launch February 28, 2009
February 26 — After a successful beta period, Afriquest (www.afriquest.com), the free online database for records of African and African American genealogy and...
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