Ancestor's Footprints with Bernice Alexander Bennett

In 1820, exactly two hundred years ago, with the signing of The Treaty of Doak’s Stand, more than five million acres of Choctaw ancestral land in what is now Madison, County, MS was ceded to the United States. As a result, white planters flocked to the area forcing thousands of enslaved black people to migrate with them often leaving family members behind. A number of those planters originated in...

Join Dr. Shelley Murphy for a discussion about the challenges we face when researching African American ancestry. Shelley will share her experiences with brick walls and some ways that might help you combat some of the brick walls we all have and will face. For some, the words “So What?” seem like a curt reply to a simple question. For Shelley Murphy, however, they are the driving force behind her...

Almost Disappeared: Unearthing My Family History is a blog that will primarily share genealogical resources and methodology, and add a new voice to those who feel they have been chosen to call the names of their ancestors and tell their stories. Alvin Blakes is a lifelong organizer and community worker who has been researching African history since he was a teenager, and has traveled to Africa, Eu...

In 2018, Nichelle Smith started researching 1619 and the story of the first enslaved Africans to land in the Virginia colony. She became fascinated by a woman named Angela, the only African woman listed by name in the colony's 1625 muster.  Four hundred years later, her resilience and survival is so remarkable that Angela was the subject of a recent archaeological dig at Historic Jamestown. Nichel...

Self Made is Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker. A’Lelia Bundles is the author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, the 2001 New York Times Notable Book about her entrepreneurial great-great-grandmother. Renamed Self Made for the 2020 edition, this biography is the inspiration for the four-part Netflix series starring Oscar winner Octavia Spencer that premiered on...

Join Melissa Barker for a conversation about archiving and preserving records.  Melissa Barker is a Certified Archives Manager and Public Historian currently working at the Houston County, Tennessee Archives. She lectures, teaches and writes about the genealogy research process, researching in archives and records preservation. She conducts virtual webinar presentations across the United States fo...

  Ric Murphy is an educator, historian, lecturer and award-winning author. He has served as board chair of several organizations and on numerous additional national and local not-for-profit boards. His achievements also includes serving as the National Vice President for the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Association Ric's new publication the Arrival of the First Africans in Virginia is...

A travel video series chronicling Denise’s many adventures around the world. From her 1st international trip to Moscow at 14 to her most recent journey to Ghana, Denise shares her love of international travel with a dose of geography, Black history, travel hacks, and humor. Current episodes include Fiji, Ghana, Cartagena, and Bermuda with many more to come. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiZiRT13...

Amateur genealogist Joel Johnson will share his 4x great-grandmother Harriet Rigg’s life story and along the way illustrate how traditional and genetic genealogy leads to a deeper understanding of his enslaved ancestor in Bulloch County, Georgia. His research into county records revealed Harriet and her family had 5 enslavers, all in the same town of Statesboro, GA, and their transition to freedom...

Leonard Smith III is a renaissance man. Since 1975, he has been involved in every aspect of historical research from genealogy, photography, technology, storytelling, film-making, and music. Leonard's company, LS3 Studios, LLC has produced award-winning documentaries about musicians, institutions, and family histories. His most recent project, " A Place Called Desire" was a finalist for best docum...

This project seeks to learn, preserve, and disseminate the story of African Americans who homesteaded in the Great Plains. The project is a collaborative effort with Nicodemus National Historic Site and the Homestead National Monument of America. It is partially funded by the National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. Th...

This show will focus on the short but extraordinary life of Reconstruction era Senator Lawrence Cain of Edgefield, South Carolina.  He was considered an honorable and virtuous man and helped shape South Carolina politics between 1865 and 1877 as one of the leaders of the Radical Republican movement. He rose above numerous obstacles to go from slave to state senator. Over 150 years ago he was at th...

Angela Walton is a descendant of Choctaw Freedmen--former people enslaved in the Choctaw Nation, by Choctaw Indians. Since discovering her family records in 1991 at the National Archives, she has devoted herself over the years to research Freedmen from all of the former slave-holding tribes of Oklahoma. These are Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole Nations. She is the only nationally...

  In 2017, an enslaver's descendant found his 1841 will naming eleven enslaved African Americans. She started trying to research them, and quickly found the difficulties confronting those seeking their African-American ancestors' stories. When she realized she had access to information they would have trouble finding, she created a website -- TheyHadNames.net -- to document the many African-Americ...

  Pamela Bailey is a nationally published author, a singer-songwriter, and a self-described Carolina Daughter. She is descended from enslaved people from the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. Pamela earned her MFA Degree in Non-fiction Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina, and her undergraduate degree in Business Marketing from South Carolina State University in Ora...

Join author Bernice Alexander Bennett and Angela Walton-Raji for a conversation about Tracing Their Steps- A Memoir. Bernice will discuss her journey to verify her grandmother MaBecky’s story about a lot of land her grandfather Peter Clark, owned in Maurepas, La. Using the bits and pieces shared by MaBecky and conducting painstaking research through an array of obstacles, Bennett identified the la...

   The Early Federal Census Worksheet is a genealogy spreadsheet application for Microsoft Excel that allows the easy capture of the decennial U.S. federal census data from 1790 to 1860. Lining up data over time, it creates a visual comparison of the changing composition and geographical locations of families, including white, free nonwhite, and enslaved members of any given U.S. household. Donna...

  Join Author  Dr. Antoinette Harrell for a discussion of her new publication - Images of America: African Americans in Tangipahoa and St. Helena Parishes. Leonard Smith III, wrote the foreword for this publication. Dr. Harrell will discuss how she encouraged and mobilized the community to donate photos for this first ever publication in Tangipahoa and St. Helena Parishes. The Images in this serie...

    With The Lost Empire: Black Freemasonry in the Old West (1867-1906), James R. Morgan III artfully transports readers to the period when western outlaws ruled the territories and brings them face to face with the black men who brought enlightenment, guidance and protection to the formerly enslaved through organization. At the vanguard was Captain William Dominick Matthews--Freemason, Civil War...

Ric Murphy will explore the history of the 20 and odd African captives that arrived in Virginia around 1619 and planted the seeds of the American slave trade. This is the first group of Africans to go on record to be sold as involuntary laborers. A Boston native, Ric Murphy is an educator, historian, and award-winning author of several books and historical publications. Long before he started writ...

Keme Nzerem and Sam Rinehart are descendants of slave owner John Rinehart of Edgefield, South Carolina. They are interested in finding descendants of slaves owned by their family. Keme Nzerem is a British Journalist with a Nigerian father and German American mother. He has discovered that his mother's family - the Rineharts of Edgefield owned slaves. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www...

Nicka Smith will share how she discovered that James Alexander Ventress, the namesake of Ventress Hall on the University of Mississippi’s campus was also a slave owner and owned her family. Nicka Smith is a professional photographer, speaker, host, and documentarian with more than 19 years of experience as a genealogist. She has extensive experience in African /ancestored genealogy, reverse geneal...

During the closing days of the American Civil War, a little-remembered document, a census of the Federal Military Districts, was created. The document entitled, Census Department of the South – November 1864: For Jacksonville, Fernandina and St. Augustine, Florida – Ordered by the Department of the South, Hilton Head, South Carolina, proved to be an effective tool in augmenting genealogical resear...

Join Christopher Smothers for a heart wrenching story about Henry Brookhart, the man who was beaten, lynched and survived during the 1876 election season in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. Christopher Smothers founded Unearthing Your Roots, Inc. in January of 2018,  to provide professional genealogical services to people in search of their biological families and ancestors abroad. A native of Ma...

Rodney Sam will discuss the uniqueness of Louisiana Creole genealogy and a personal journey to learn about his Louisiana Creole heritage. He has conducted extensive research on the following surnames in his family: Sam, Rideau, Edward, Desmerais, Donato, Masse, Senette, Pitre, Charles, Jacques, Young, Fruge, LaChapelle, Tesson, Birotte and Meullion. The geographic locations for his research are in...