Reparational Genealogy for Descendants of the Enslaved

NOW WORKING WITH LATONYA LAWSON JONES OF THE NOMINI HALL PROJECT!

Ancestors Alive! practices Reparational Genealogy. Indeed, this is where the term was coined!!

If you stop and think about all that White culture has stolen from African-Americans, it’s a lot more than just money – housing, employment, education, and every other opportunity that Whites take for granted, even down to life itself, has been taken from, or pared down to nothing for, Black America.

The most important things that the White power structure has taken from African-Americans, however, are family members and relationships, national identities, and NAMES. Reparational Genealogy seeks to help African-Americans to reclaim their names from hundreds of years of negation and alienation by Whites in preparation for applications to governmental, corporate, and educational entities.

If you are African-American and you are willing to take a genealogical DNA test through Ancestry DNA, FTDNA and/or 23andme.com, Ancestors Alive! will build you a tree on Ancestry.com for free. I am a technician, and you need a diligently-constructed tree in order to have a starting place when seeking records from archives and private collections (land, legal & religious records, for instance).

I’ll go back as far as I can using purely documentary evidence, then teach you how to use Ancestry and FamilySearch so that you can take over your tree using best practices and best evidence.

I’ll work with you and refer you to other, more experienced POC genetic genealogists to upload your raw DNA and tree to GEDmatch.com and LivingDNA, and your raw DNA to 23andme.com so that you can start to contact people who share DNA with you.

Through DNA research and standard family tree documentation, you can begin the process of finding your extended family and tracing your African, Native American, Latin American, and possibly European origins.

Once you feel comfortable with the process of seeking relatives and maintaining your own tree, I will transfer the tree to FamilySearch (a free site provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), or you can buy a membership to Ancestry.

WARNING: DNA work frequently proves that African-Americans have more Northern and Western European blood (and less Native American blood) than expected, and it is an emotionally challenging process. If you elect to engage with Ancestors Alive! in this process, we will proceed together in your time and at your pace.

For an explanation of the genesis of Reparational Genealogy, read this post.

IF YOU ARE A WHITE GENEALOGIST: Please provide this service to Black clientele. Every White genealogist and amateur with a tree should help advance the goals of Reparational Genealogy with pro bono work.

IF YOU ARE A WHITE/ANGLO-EUROPEAN HOBBYIST OR PERSONAL RESEARCHER: Please do two things that assist in this work:

SHRUB rather than TREE – research every person in each generation of your family rather than just going straight backward. The work that you do to provide names and relationships, combined with DNA tests from your families, could provide much-needed context not only for adopted and fostered researchers and persons of unclear parentage, but also for persons of color.
ASSIST BLACK RESEARCHERS WITH AN OPEN HEART – even if you don’t understand how your family could have any ties to the African-American population, DNA doesn’t lie. It takes a great deal of courage for anyone Black to reach out, and many Black researchers get doors slammed in their faces with insulting and humiliating regularity. Please be a part of the solution and work WITH, not AGAINST, the needs of others. We are one family.