Steep hills, towering cliffs and a dense limestone forest shroud this remote mountain village, born out of the decades-long struggle between English colonizers and...
Read moreShaking the family tree: Filmmaker explores her family’s role in the slave trade
Should Rhode Island, which sent more slave ships to Africa than any other state, apologize for its role in the slave trade? Should lawmakers jettison the last half of...
Read moreFinding ancestor wills is a historical treasure
Though not all of our property-owning forbears left a will, many of them did. For the genealogist, finding an ancestor’s last instructions recorded for posterity is...
Read moreSlave Labor Helped Build Capitol
Tours, exhibits and commemorative plaques in the Capitol should recognize the contributions of slaves in constructing Congress’ home, experts told a House...
Read more1845 document connects Stokes family to slavery’s grim reality
An 1845 document filed away at the Jefferson County Courthouse in Georgia attests to the magnitude of what Carl B. Stokes accomplished in Cleveland just a century...
Read moreHelp needed to preserve Latin American genealogy records
My abuelita, Guadalupe, used to like telling all of us grandkids while she made us stand in line at the stove to receive a hot-off-the-griddle corn tortilla, that she...
Read moreHistory center gets documents tracing slaves’ legal status
The amount it cost Peter Cosco, slave, to buy his freedom in the year 1792: 100 pounds. Finding the original document of the transaction 215 years later and saving it...
Read moreRenowned scholar/author to discuss ‘searching for our identity’
Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Alphonse Fletcher University professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African–American Research...
Read moreCrossing back over the color line
Americans have usually admired those who reinvent themselves, flouting limits and crossing borders. But crossing the color line, it seems, was always different. That...
Read moreFor black Americans, society offers a window to history
ISLE OF WIGHT, Va. – While their white counterparts often easily reach into their families’ pasts, many black Americans assume their history beyond their...
Read more