Black genealogy blogs abound on the Internet. The sites range from modest — limited to bloggers' personal tales about researching their great-grandma — to extensive, with photos, documents and links that may help you advance your own research. You can dive into Genealogy Blog Finder's African American Genealogy Blogs page (on Facebook, go here) to search for blogs by subject, such as surname or topics.
The five genealogy blogs included here were chosen because they are broad and detailed enough to be useful for beginner, intermediate and advanced researchers.
Are you a Virginia researcher? Then check out the African-American Families Database. According to the site, "the African-American Families Database project is hosted by the Central Virginia History Researchers (CVHR), a unique partnership between local historians, anthropologists, database designers, and community residents. CVHR is developing an on-line database for connecting African-American families to their antebellum roots and tracing patterns of community formation in the post-bellum period."
The blog also gives information about meetings held by the CVHR group. Although the full title of the database project indicates that it is restricted to "Community Formation in Albemarle County, Virginia, 1850-1880," the group has a diverse list of speakers at its meetings and includes meeting topics about other Virginia counties. The blog archives date back to 2009.
The African-Native American Genealogy Blog — "Reflecting the Lives of Blended Families From African & Native American Families" — is the work of Angela Y. Walton-Raji, one of the Web's most prominent authorities on African-Native American genealogy. Much of the blog chronicles her research of the Five Civilized Tribes (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole) and their African slaves. She attends conferences and workshops and blogs about her impressions and experiences afterward.
The blog isn't searchable, but there is an archive. It's a well-organized, clean site with uncluttered pages and compelling photos and documents. Her writing is also straightforward and interesting. Few black researchers are as authoritative in studying the ties between African-American freedmen and Native Americans.
Here is her thoughtful commentary from an Oct. 15, 2010, post, "Who Will Meet Me on the Cultural Bridge?" after she attended a September storytellers symposium in Muskogee, Okla.:
After attending the storytellers symposium in Muskogee Oklahoma last month, the concept of being met on the bridge was a wonderful metaphor that continuously comes to my mind.
I was glad to be there with colleagues from the Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen community, and with colleagues whose focus is to research, and document our own history. …
The fact is: We were there, because our ancestors were there. Period.
But what I was left with, was the need to find those incredible stories of survival and persistence, and also of resistance, exhibited by Africans brought into Five Tribes as slaves.
I realized that if we don't tell our stories their history might be altered — by fiction.
The AfriGeneas Blog, described as "African American genealogy and history news and views," is part of the granddaddy of black genealogy sites, Afrigeneas.com. The blog is easy to navigate, and although there aren't a lot of blog entries, most of them are informative.
Eight contributors from the main Afrigeneas website posted blog entries in December 2010. Postings included an article about how Footnote.com and Lowcountry Africana were collaborating to launch a "free collection of historical records from the South Carolina Department of Archives and History containing estate inventories and bills of sale for Colonial and Charleston South Carolina from 1732 to 1872." There was also a report from the International Black Genealogy Summit in Indiana from October 2009, with photos.
Black Nashville Genealogy & History, built by Taneya Koonce of Nashville, Tenn. (who identifies herself in her Facebook profile as associate director for research at Vanderbilt University), is an impressive, wide-ranging site. Not only has Koonce researched her own family and posted her family history as links from her site, on Facebook and on Ancestry.com, but she has also added detailed information about black genealogy in Nashville.
The site includes article excerpts from black newspapers in Tennessee; categories such as banks, cemeteries, churches, schools and surnames; and links to other Tennessee-related blogs, including Davidson County and the Nashville Public Library's local history page. Black Nashville's archives date back to 2006. If you have Tennessee ancestors, Koonce's site is worth an exploration.
Blogging Genealogy, subtitled "the Official Blog of the Indiana African American Genealogy Group," links to the IAAGG website as well as the Indiana Genealogical Society Blog, the African Ancestry Blog and the Genealogy Roots Blog. Its archives date back to 2009.
Blogging Genealogy also keeps the public updated about IAAGG's activities, such as a visit to the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, which is the second-largest genealogy repository in the United States. Several entries by IAAGG member Tami Winfrey Harris include tips on black genealogy research.
Karin D. Berry is a newspaper journalist and freelance writer who has been researching her family history since 1987. Her articles, book reviews and op-ed articles have been published in Essence, Black Enterprise, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Macon Telegraph, the Baltimore Sun, the Evening Sun, Emerge and the Philadelphia Daily News.