Hello and welcome back to the African Roots Podcast! You can reach me HERE.

It is good to be back online and to get back to bringing people up to date on things. I was hear back in November with Shelley Murphy aka Family Tree Girl as we were having our “Digging the Roots” chat and we had loads of fun doing that, and will be back later in the month again!

I hope that you had a great Thanksgiving holiday and made some new memories with family. And thankfully here in the Mid-Atlantic states we have had wonderfully mild weather. That makes holiday shopping pleasant. Now—this is December, and I have to finish my 52-week project where I am documenting 52 Families in 52 weeks.

I am doing this on the African-Native American Genealogy Blog. This is for the Freedmen from the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole Nations.

These are families with a rich history and often overlooked even within the African diaspora whose stories are under-told and forgotten. I have to catch up, so that in the next 30 days I will complete that project.

As we look ahead for next year—I have Roots Tech,  plus events in Sacramento, Arkansas, Kentucky, the Southern California Jamboree, and of course there is MAAGI–an amazing experience. I have personally have two goals for 2018—a year of reading and a year of writing. So many things to get us all organized. 

 

There is the Genealogist’s Writing Room, and there is Black Pro Gen-–a group of genealogists who get together LIVE on YouTube. We reach out to the audience with Ask Mariah, and we help some get through brick walls. I hope that many of you will join us there. There is so much energy going on and much of the landscape has changed over the years. You can now follow many of us LIVE online! We have people from California to the eastern seaboard. We are all ages—check us all out at the links above.

As for my own writing, I have two manuscripts to push into the realm of being published this coming year, so keep your eyes open and I invite you to nudge me from time to time.

What are you all involved in?? I know that Shelley Murphy is working on an E-book about to come out soon. Have you been following Nicka Smith? Pay attention to her work. She is a young woman with tons of energy. Watch her—I think you will not only be impressed, but also inspired.

Have you thought of merging your interests? The Find Your Folks blog by Drusilla Pair, has taken some of her genealogy into an interest in drama and theatre. She merged her interest in history and writing and took them to the stage. Nicka blends her interest in historical research with her passion for photography. Toni Carrier of LowCountry Africana, takes her background in anthropology with her passion for history. You can merge or blend your interesting and come up with a new platform. Bernice Bennett has blended her interest in public speaking with history and is into her 6th year of her own Blog radio program. You can find her program on Blog Talk Radio. She is re-broadcast some of them for this year, and she has put it online and offers the only African American genealogy radio host.

For me, as a life long reader, I look forward to creating some book reviews, and hope to put them out there. My focus will be the books that have emerged from those who taken genealogical research and put it on the printed page.  I am curious—what inspires you, or who inspires you?

Many of us have seen the genealogy landscape change, and now with digitization we can do things at home, but we can also participate and add to digitization via indexing, scanning records. We now have people also interacting with others live. Facebook has multiple groups online, and technology has enhanced our lives. We become better as we see and embrace the new tools.

I am looking forward to seeing more of you on the road, and stay tuned for Digging the Roots with colleague Shelley Murphy.

I will be checking back in a few days and talking about everything from holiday traditions. So the hiatus is over and I am productive yet again.

Enjoy the holiday season, in the meantime, keep researching, keep documenting, and keep sharing what you find!