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.
