Welcome back to the African Roots Podcast!
You can reach me at AfricanRootsPodcast@gmail.com

Welcome to the end of summer on this last weekend in August! Hard to believe that the season has come and gone and now we are moving towards fall. However, this is still a season where there are a good number of conferences. And a special shout out to those in attendance at the FGS Conference, one of the “Big Three” genealogical events. Many are enjoying themselves in Birmingham Alabama and I hope to join some of you there later today as well. I had hoped to be there all week, but family has taken precedent and I will be there only briefly.

But there are many events coming up in the fall. I will be speaking at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York again in September, then in Chicago for the Chicago African American Genealogical Society conference, and then on to Salt Lake City for the International Black Genealogy Summit.an American

But take note—the northern California African American Genealogical society is hosting a Black Family History Day in October. And the National conference for the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society is hosting its annual conference in Greensboro NC

Also note—there is a series of seven 90 minute genealogy seminars, hosted by the California Genealogical Society. This is a good series for beginners to consider taking.

Also don’t forget to look for AfriGeneas staffers at the events this fall and get your special AfriGeneas thumb drive! A number of features including a guide to the site is on the drive. And you can also put your own documents and projects on the thumb drive as well.

Speaking of projects–do you have some unexpected projects that have captured your time and attention? Perhaps it is now time to share them. Talk about them and blog about them, write about them and speak about them. These stories need to come out!

I hope you heard Bernice Bennett’s show last night! She focused on the slave ship manifests from the early 1800s to 1860. Claire Kluskens from the National Archives. Ms. Kluskens talked about the Slave Manifest records and the value the record set can have for one studying the entire region. Records from Baltimore to New Orleans are represented and all points in between. Could your ancestral region be included among those records?

The records such as the Slave Ship Manifests are among the many records than can unexpectedly steer us into new projects. The task is to listen when those new projects call us and get busy.

Well I hope to see some of you in Birmingham and others I will see in the midwest and far west this fall. In the meantime thank you for taking time out from your day to tune into the podcast.

Remember to always keep researching, keep documenting and keep sharing what you find!

Welcome back to the African Roots Podcast!
You can always reach me at AfricanRootsPodcast@gmail.com

Are you ready for FGS next week?
Some great speakers area going to be there and some fascinating workshops including:

Emma Hamilton: Manifests of Slave Shipments along the Waterway 1808-1864 (S-419) Emma Hamilton
Wevoneeda Minus: Researching African Americans in the Wake of the Civil War: A Case Study
& Freedman’s Bureau Labor Conractrs: A Closer Look
Frazine Taylor: Tracing Your African American Ancestry: Where to Start
& Using Genealogical Periodical for Researching African American Family History

Some other interesting topic are:
Skill Building for African American Research (Jim Ison-Family Search)
The African American Homestead Experience, South and North (S-448) Roberta Bobbie Kind
Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes (T-223) Barbar Becker Meehan
The Guion Miller Roll—Documenting Cherokee Families (Kathy Huber)

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Monday August 27, Newark Delaware:

Sylvester Woolford of Newark will present “US Colored Troops in the Civil War,” a lecture that explores the experiences of the free blacks and freed slaves who served in the Civil War, at 6:30 p.m., Monday, Aug. 27.
As part of his presentation, Woolford will shine a light on the 1,000 Delawareans who served as U.S. colored troops, including photographs of their tombstones Woolford will also explore the most famous colored troops unit of the war – the 54th Massachusetts regiment that was depicted in the movie “Glory” starring Denzel Washington. Woolford’s lecture will provide additional historical facts about the regiment that were not covered in the film. For additional information about the program, call Debra Martin of the coalition at 302-576-3107. Call 302-629-2524 to contact the Seaford District Library.

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A shout out is going to those who are attending the African American Museums Conference, Baltimore MD Aug 22 – 25 They are meeting this weekend here in Maryland and I hope that I will know more about them in future years. Let’s remember to support museum professionals, librarians, archivists, and others in historical preservation.

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If you did not get to hear Bernice Bennett’s show last night, George Geder impressed the listeners with some excellent advice on collecting oral histories. He emphasized seizing your own story and telling that story in addition to those told by the elders. Discussion of methods of collecting stories and the need to remember to transcribe the interviews is critical. It was also a pleasure to hear the voice of a person whose words we read so frequently on his blogs. This is one of those shows that will inspire you to tell you own story and to begin to write your own autobiography. Her show airs every Thursday evening at 9pm on Blog Talk Radio.

Listening to George Geder last night made me think about not only Oral History projects, but also about other projects that sometimes seem to get “in the way” of various things that we do. Well I have a new project documenting the participation of women who served in the Civil War as nurses, matrons and simply workers. Some were trained skilled nurses, others were performing other tasks from cooking to laundry and others served as matrons. However, I have found a set of records that reflect the names of these women and where they worked. As a result, I see the need to tell their stories and to respond to the call to get that story out there. It is not an interruption to what I do, it is simply what I do.