Hello and welcome back to the African Roots Pocast. You can reach me at AfricanRootsPodcast@gmail.com

Well next week is Roots Tech! I would love to be there, but I am so excited that thirteen sessions will be available through a live video stream, and we can learn so much by the workshops that we can watch at the same time. I am also looking forward to seeing what the bloggers out there will be sharing with the rest of us about the events. So let’s keep our eyes and ears open to watch the developments!

I hope you listened to Bernice Bennet’s Show last night. Bennie J. McRae was her guest and he has amassed probably more data on the US Colored Troops than most of us ever will. But what a wise man, a well read man and a gentle man. He spoke about the Civil War from the beginning and took us through the war, and up to the ratification of the 13th Amendment. His work now resides at Hampton University, and his website is also on the Hampton site. For many years his website Lest We Forget was the site to go to for basic data on the US Colored Troops and of all aspects of African American military history. Remember her show airs every Thursday evening at 9pm on Blog Talk Radio.

Speaking of Civil War I am happy to share with you a commemoration of the Louisiana Native Guards. A raid on the city of Pascagoula was made 150 years ago, and on April 14th an special event will take place to honor the black soldiers who served in that battle. There is so much to learn about and to celebrate, and I am just happy to see that some of the history is being taken back to the local community, to those whose history is being shared. The battle and the Native Guards will be remembered April 14 when a historical marker is dedicated at 10 a.m. in Gulfport’s Jones Park.Most of the 150th anniversary activities will take place that day 12 miles from the coastline
Read more here.

For those of you in Ohio, note that Ohio genealogist Kathy Reed Kathy Reed of Cincinnati is going to be giving a presentation for the African American Genealogy Group of the Miami Valley, on March 23rd. She is hoping to interest some members in starting to blog about their family history. She will also be following it up with a three-session course on how to blog using the blogger software. More information is available by contacting the society

I thought I would share this job opportunity with you. ProGenealogists, a team based in Utah is looking for case managers. The job will require relocating to Salt Lake City. More information can be found HERE.

I want to share two good databases with you:
1)Digital Library on American Slavery
Underwritten by a “We the People” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Digital Library on American Slavery is a cooperative venture between the Race and Slavery Petitions Project and the Electronic Resources and Information Technology Department of University Libraries at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

2)Rosenwald Database
Here you can find information about historical Rosenwald schools in the southern United States.
This is a wonderful resource and a great way to learn about your communmity. I learned that also in some caes home for faculty was also part of the Rosenwald project. Great information still to find.

Well, thanks for listening yet another week. I appreciate your tuning in and taking time from your busy life to hear the podcast! Have a good week and remember to keep researching, keep documenting and to keep sharing what you find!

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

I hope that everyone has recovered from the recent storm that has moved through, coming from the midwest and that moved to the northeast. I hope that you are all safe and warm. But spring is coming soon, and in three weeks spring will be here officially here. And a sign of the change in season, the days are getting longer and don’t forget to change you clocks this weekend.

Well, I had a lot of fun last night on the Bernice Bennett’s show and I was thrilled to be able to share some of my thoughts that have emanated from the many conversations that I have had with Bernice over the weeks, months, and years. I hope you get to tune in. We speak frequently and decided to take one of our conversations to the airwaves, so to speak. It was great to share things with her including the many items on my schedule for this coming year.

It is a good time to stop and reflect on how we share information, is how to share data and why. We collect lots of papers and documents, it is imperative that we do more than collect and share what we have. We can share the easy way by posting documents in various groups in Facebook, or Google+, or AfriGeneas—but remembering to generate some dialog about what you have. I also love blogging as a method of sharing–documents can be posted, discussed analyzed on blogs and this can catch the attention of others–sometimes strangers with whom we can have a good interaction.

This is a great time to find so much in so little time–but what do we do with it? I urge you all to blog—use Blogger, or Worpress or Typepad–which are free blogging platforms. And sharing data on Twitter and other sites is useful–but we don’t have a primer to follow. So we have lots to keep up with as well—but we need to join the community.

We are operating in a new environment online with no real rules out there, and we have to make sure that we are not distracted too much either by the many things that distract us online–and we have to stay focused as we share and read.

Some shout outs:
The African American Genealogy Group of Kentucky will have their regular 3rd Saturday meeting with a special guest discussing the migration of African Americans from Kentucky to Kansas.

The Delmarva Group of the Eastern Shore of MD representing Delaware, Maryland and Virginia–they are still organizing and working to become a community of genealogists.

A group of ladies who share a rich cultural history from Edgefield South Carolina. They are breaking new ground and sharing their data and having a wonderful journey as well.

This is a great time to be a genealogist because we are in a dynamic time and dynamic community of blogging, and new social interaction. This is time to think about preservation both the physical preservation of documents–but the need to share the stories that many family members need to know. We have to take our stories and put them out there—they don’t need to reside only in our heads. We have to put them in minds of others.

I am looking forward to events—The Genealogy Fair at the National Archives in Washington DC, MAAGI-the African American Genealogy Institute in St. Louis and the AAHGS conference and the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the California Genealogy Jamboree.

I hope to see you all out there this year, either in person, or online. In the meantime, thanks for following, and for sharing your notes and letters with me. And continue to keep researching, keep documenting and keep sharing what you find.