Why retracing our African roots is so difficult

One of the most difficult challenges in African American genealogy is to positively identify the last slave owner. This is essential for researching the slavery period. Unfortunately most researchers assume they are looking for an owner with the same surname as their ancestor. That led me astray for 20 years. It was only after I realized the name was probably different that I finally located the right person.

African Studies Scholar Dies

African Studies Scholar Dies Philip D. Curtin, a leading but controversial scholar on the African slave trade, who is credited with pumping new life into African studies, has died. He was 87. Curtin, a MacArthur Foundation recipient and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, passed away June 4 of pneumonia at Chester County Hospital in West Chester, Pa. In addition to publishing more than a dozen books and helping found the Department of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Curtin sparked a firestorm with his research that questioned the importance of Goree Island, Senegal, which has become a major tourist draw as the “door of no return” where millions of Africans were shipped out as slaves.

Three “Slaves” Get Formal Burial

After spending three decades in a New Jersey museum, the 200-year-old remains of three Black slaves were interred at a small African-American cemetery last week.