African American Genealogy Books

Harvesting Your Family History

by Denyce Porter Peyton - click here for professional research services

This informative book was written for young people of African American descent. It offers brief historical information about the tradition of sharing history, and emphasizes the positive aspects of family. The focus is on recording and maintaining precious family history. Colorful illustration and detailed forms are designed to help young people record and preserve valuable history in a family record. A wonderful gift or keepsake for anyone interested in genealogy!
Printed: 41 pages, 8.50" x 11.00", coil binding, full-color interior ink
ISBN: 1-4116-2770-9

Africans in America

Everything you thought you knew about slavery is about to be challenged.
Did you know only half of the over 20 million Africans kidnapped into slavery survived the torturous trip to the New World? That slaves were promised freedom to fight for Britain in the Revolutionary War? That many Europeans came to America as bonded labor? That a country founded on freedom justified the enslavement of human beings? Africans in America: America's Journey Through Slavery is the groundbreaking four-part series that makes history by sharing it from a new perspective.

Nearly ten years in the making, this landmark six-hour film series exposes the truth through surprising revelations, dramatic recreations, rare archival photography and riveting first-person accounts. Africans in America helps define the reality of slavery's past through the insightful commentary of a wide range of voices including General Colin Powell, authors John Edgar Wideman and Barry Unsworth and leading scholars. Narrated by Academy Award-nominee Angela Bassett (Waiting to Exhale), it offers unparalleled understanding—from slavery's birth in the early 1600s through the violent onset of civil war in 1860.

Black Indians: An American Story

brings to light a forgotten part of America's past, the cultural and racial fusion of Native and African Americans. Narrated by James Earl Jones, produced and directed by the award-winning Native American production company Rich-Heape Films, this presentation explores what brought the two groups together, what drove them apart and the challenges they face today.
Director - Chip Richie
Executive Producer - Steven R. Heape
Writer - Daniel Blake Smith
Starring: James Earl Jones

Black Roots : A Beginners Guide To Tracing The African American Family Tree

Trace, document, record, and write your family's history with this easy-to-read, step-by-step authoritative guide.

Finally, here is the fun, easy-to-use guide that African Americans have been waiting for since Alex Haley published Roots more than twenty-five years ago. Written by the leading African American professional genealogist in the United States who teaches and lectures widely, Black Roots highlights some of the special problems, solutions, and sources unique to African Americans. Based on solid genealogical principles and designed for those who have little or no experience researching their family's past, but valuable to any genealogist, this book explains everything you need to get started, including: where to search close to home, where to write for records, how to make the best use of libraries and the Internet, and how to organize research, analyze historical documents, and write the family history.

Finding a Place Called Home : A Guide to African-American Genealogy and Historical Identity

Two major questions of the ages are: Who am I? and Where am I going? From the moment the first African slaves were dragged onto these shores, these questions have become increasingly harder for African-Americans to answer. To find the answers, you first must discover where you have been, you must go back to your family tree--but you must dig through rocky layers of lost information, of slavery--to find your roots.

During the Great Migration in the 1940s, when African-Americans fled the strangling hands of Jim Crow for the relative freedoms of the North, many tossed away or buried the painful memories of their past. As we approach the new millennium, African-Americans are reaching back to uncover where we have been, to help us determine where we are going.

Finding a Place Called Home is a comprehensive guide to finding your African-American roots and tracing your family tree. Written in a clear, conversational, and accessible style, this book shows you, step-by-step, how to find out who your family was and where they came from.

Beginning with your immediate family, Dr. Dee Parmer Woodtor gives you all the necessary tools to dig up your past: how to interview family members; how to research your past using census reports, slave schedules, property deeds, and courthouse records; and how to find these records. Using the Internet for genealogical research is also discussed in this timely and necessary book.

Finding a Place Called Home helps you find your family tree, and helps place it in the context of the garden of African-American people. As you learn how to find your own history, you learn the history of all Africans in the Americas, including the Caribbean, and how to benefit from a new understanding of your family's history, and your people's.

Finding a Place Called Home also discusses the growing family reunion movement and other ways to clebrate newly discovered family history.

Tomorrow will always lie ahead of us if we don't forget yesterday. Finding a Place Called Home shows how to retrieve yesterday to free you for all of your tomorrows.