Research At The National Archives And Beyond!

Leonard Smith III is a renaissance man. Since 1975, he has been involved in every aspect of historical research from genealogy, photography, technology, storytelling, film-making, and music. Leonard's company, LS3 Studios, LLC has produced award-winning documentaries of musicians, institutions, and family histories. His most recent project, " A Place Called Desire" was a finalist for best documentary in the San Diego Black Film Festival. It has won a Gold Ava Award and was a semifinalist in the Rootstech Film Fest. It is a story of the community Leonard grew up in the 60's and 70"s in New Orleans. He has a deep abiding love to "educate, entertain, inspire others to tell their story."

Renate Yarborough Sanders is a retired educator, with over 34 years of experience in early childhood (NK-4) education. Except for two years in a private pre-school setting, her entire career was spent teaching in Title 1 schools, where she was celebrated for her successful classroom management techniques, positive and loving relationships with students, and excellent academic outcomes for all learners. Additionally, Renate served as a member of numerous district-wide curriculum and thought committees and served in grade-level and building-level lead positions. Renate, whose certification as an Early Childhood Educator is still active, continues to engage with her district’s students as a part-time reading teacher, a screener for the Title 1 preschool program, and by offering private tutoring services.  Additionally, since her 2017 retirement, Renate, an experienced genealogist, has increased her availability for speaking engagements and working with clientele in that arena.

In the Lost Family, journalist Libby Copeland investigates what happens when we embark on a vast social experiment with little understanding of the ramifications. Libby Copeland is an award-winning journalist who has written for the Washington Post, New York magazine, the New York Times, the Atlantic, and many other publications. She specializes in the intersection of science and culture. Copeland was a reporter and editor at the Post for eleven years, has been a media fellow and guest lecturer, and has made numerous appearances on television and radio.

Join Sharon M. Weinstein for a discussion about how to manage your stress during this difficult time. Sharon Weinstein is Chief Executive Officer, SMW Group LLC and President/Founder of the Global Education Development Institute. She specializes in workforce-related issues including service excellence, outcomes, and stress management. A native of Philadelphia, Sharon completed her nursing education at Pennsylvania Hospital, followed by undergraduate and graduate degrees in business and healthcare administration in Florida and Texas. She holds the coveted Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, the highest earned international recognition for professional speakers. This makes her one of only 17% of all speakers to hold this designation and one of three Fellows of the Academy of Nursing with this credential.

Join Genealogist Angela Walton- Raji and host Bernice Alexander Bennett for a quick conversation about what they are doing during the coronavirus covid-19 pandemic.

This project seeks to learn, preserve, and disseminate the story of African Americans who homesteaded in the Great Plains. The project is a collaborative effort with Nicodemus National Historic Site and the Homestead National Monument of America. It is partially funded by the National Park Service and the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund. The project is producing a general survey of black homesteaders in eight plains states. The research will create the first extensive database of black homesteaders in these states. The project also focuses on six important black homesteading communities or "colonies": Blackdom, NM; Nicodemus, KS; DeWitty, NE; Empire, WY; Dearfield, CO; and Sully County, SD. They are the largest and longest-lived communities in each state. The project is currently working with local partners to build historic markers near the Empire and Sully County sites.  Jacob K. Friefeld is a Research Fellow at the Center for Great Plains S

This show will focus on the short but extraordinary life of Reconstruction era Senator Lawrence Cain of Edgefield, South Carolina.  He was considered an honorable and virtuous man and helped shape South Carolina politics between 1865 and 1877 as one of the leaders of the Radical Republican movement. He rose above numerous obstacles to go from slave to state senator. Over 150 years ago he was at the epicenter of social injustice and racism in South Carolina and became a major leader who fought for political and civil rights. The facts of his life had been forgotten like much of African American history during Reconstruction.  Now the facts and reality of his life have been rediscovered by Lawrence Cain's great great-grandson in this new book with the help of family, genealogy research, archived papers and genetic DNA results.. Kevin Cherry graduated from James Madison University in Virginia and started on a 30 year career in business development and technical sales including AT&T and 20 years at Micr

    Tune in to hear genealogists Luke Alexander, Lisa Fanning, Tyrone Goodwyn and Andre Kearns discuss  and share their perspectives on the challenges and opportunities DNA test companies face in marketing to the African American consumer. Andre Kearns is a genealogist, public speaker, commentator and writer.  He regularly shares his research findings at his website www.cumbofamily.com.  He also blogs on race, culture, history and genealogy at  https://medium.com/@andrekearns. Lisa Ann Fanning is a genealogist, family historian, diversity and inclusion strategist, and award-winning artist. She also specializes in genetic genealogy and using DNA to help adoptees locate their birth families. Luke Alexander is a genealogist and community historian with a focus on FPOC/Indigenous heritage in the Carolinas, and as vice-president of the Benjamin & Edith Spaulding Descendants Foundation, Inc. (spauldingfamily.org) is engaged in philanthropic activities in his FPOC ancestral hometown Farmers Union, NC. Tyron

Angela Walton is a descendant of Choctaw Freedmen--former people enslaved in the Choctaw Nation, by Choctaw Indians. Since discovering her family records in 1991 at the National Archives, she has devoted herself over the years to research Freedmen from all of the former slave-holding tribes of Oklahoma. These are Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole Nations. She is the only nationally known genealogist  who has this specialty, and she had developed a unique perspective of telling stories about the former slaves--the Freedmen from these tribes. Her new book is "Freedmen of the Frontier," which grew out of a project in 2017 where she documented 52 Freedmen families, over 52 weeks---the entire year. In 2018, she decided to turn those 52 blog posts into a 2-volume book set reflecting stories of these 52 families she profiled. She is a blogger, and podcaster and she claims both Arkansas and Oklahoma as her home states. She has a degree in Spanish from St. Louis University and a Master of Education fr

  In 2017, an enslaver's descendant found his 1841 will naming eleven enslaved African Americans. She started trying to research them, and quickly found the difficulties confronting those seeking their African-American ancestors' stories. When she realized she had access to information they would have trouble finding, she created a website -- TheyHadNames.net -- to document the many African-American names found in antebellum Liberty County records. More than 5,000 names from wills, estate inventories, bills of sale, deeds of collateral, and church records have so far been added to the site. These names are missing from other published compilations of these records.  The eleven enslaved people who inspired the site have not been forgotten. The search continues but so far five of their descendants now have their family history back to 1793.   Stacy Ashmore Cole retired from the federal civil service in 2014 to Brunswick, Georgia. She began researching her family history, a hobby that quickly turned into an o

  Pamela Bailey is a nationally published author, a singer-songwriter, and a self-described Carolina Daughter. She is descended from enslaved people from the Pee Dee region of South Carolina. Pamela earned her MFA Degree in Non-fiction Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina, and her undergraduate degree in Business Marketing from South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, South Carolina Pamela has created a project called the Big Family Search, and she is using social media, DNA testing, and accessible technology to reunite descendants from various branches of her ancestral family.  Their South Carolina ancestors were separated by forced migration between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War when the domestic slave trade boomed at the end of the Transatlantic Slave Trade around 1808. She is creating a documentary project about her family’s reunification in an effort to shed light on this important, but often neglected part of American history.

Join author Bernice Alexander Bennett and Angela Walton-Raji for a conversation about Tracing Their Steps- A Memoir. Bernice will discuss her journey to verify her grandmother MaBecky’s story about a lot of land her grandfather Peter Clark, owned in Maurepas, La. Using the bits and pieces shared by MaBecky and conducting painstaking research through an array of obstacles, Bennett identified the land her 2x great grandfather acquired under the Homestead Act of 1862. But, he was not alone:  other African American men also acquired land and supported each other in the application process. Tracing Their Steps: A Memoir will take the reader on a journey to learn how the power of oral history can serve as a guide to capturing not only a beautiful family history, but untold African American history as well.    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1733648402/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=reseatthenati-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1733648402&linkId=a2b8626f0b2604ea0ee256e3dd8

   The Early Federal Census Worksheet is a genealogy spreadsheet application for Microsoft Excel that allows the easy capture of the decennial U.S. federal census data from 1790 to 1860. Lining up data over time, it creates a visual comparison of the changing composition and geographical locations of families, including white, free nonwhite, and enslaved members of any given U.S. household. Donna Cox Baker is editor-in-chief of Alabama Heritage magazine, headquartered at the University of Alabama She has a PhD in history, hosts the Golden Egg Genealogist blog (gegboundcom) and cofounded the Beyond Kin Project (beyondkin.org.) She is author of two books: Views of the Future State: Afterlife Beliefs in the Deep South, 1820–1865 (2018) and Zotero for Genealogists: Harnessing the Power of Your Research (2019).     Music by AK Alexander - composer, musician and producer

  Join Author  Dr. Antoinette Harrell for a discussion of her new publication - Images of America: African Americans in Tangipahoa and St. Helena Parishes. Leonard Smith III, wrote the foreword for this publication. Dr. Harrell will discuss how she encouraged and mobilized the community to donate photos for this first ever publication in Tangipahoa and St. Helena Parishes. The Images in this series celebrates and documents the priceless images of African American people in the two Louisiana Florida Parishes. Each photograph and each title presents the distinctive stories from the past. Images of African American educators, farmers, pioneers, elected officials, business owners, and others are featured in this rich collection. The rich images tell the story and history of the undocumented history of people who called the Florida Parishes home.

Join Angela Walton-Raji, Dr. Shelley Murphy, Janis Forte and Bernice Bennett for a discussion of the Tracks offered through MAAGI. The Midwest African American Genealogy Institute (MAAGI) is a place where attendees learn, research, and gain the tools needed to become a stellar genealogists and family history researchers. MAAGI is the only African American focused event offering a total of 78 classes over 3 days with evening lectures, and guided personalized instruction. In 2018, attendees selected a track in which they immersed themselves in a core curriculum for three days taking 7 different tracks, guided by nationally recognized instructors.  Save the Dates: July 9 - 11, 2019 The Genealogy Center at Allen County Library, Ft. Wayne, Indiana

The Descendants of the Slave Narratives—are uniquely positioned, if not obligated, to carry forward the largely forgotten work of our ancestors. At this moment in time, in the 400th year of the first ship landing of Africans in British Colonial America, there is no better time to trumpet awareness about this watershed in our history and to encourage the entire nation to, reflect, reclaim and honor, the history of a people who have contributed greatly to the American story. Regina E. Mason, founder of IBC, is a descendant of William Grimes of Virginia who, in 1825, wrote the first fugitive slave narrative in the U.S. The Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave predates antislavery propaganda and is a work of literary independence.  Susi Ryan, fiber artist, and quilter is a descendant of Venture Smith aka Broteer, the son of a Prince. In 1798, he chronicled his capture from Africa and life in New England in A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa. Vera Williams is a descendant

    With The Lost Empire: Black Freemasonry in the Old West (1867-1906), James R. Morgan III artfully transports readers to the period when western outlaws ruled the territories and brings them face to face with the black men who brought enlightenment, guidance and protection to the formerly enslaved through organization. At the vanguard was Captain William Dominick Matthews--Freemason, Civil War officer and abolitionist--who became one of the most illustrious and controversial figures of his time. This book takes an in-depth look at the role Freemasonry played in shaping African American culture, and examines the lives of the most prominent black Freemasons of the period as well as their internal and external battles. Captain Matthews followed his own rules of masonic leadership, informed by the violent and fast paced time in which he lived. This was the west and this is how it was won for Black Freemasonry! James R. Morgan III is a graduate of the Howard University in Washington, D.C. where he obtained

Falling Through the Ceiling: Our ADHDFamily Memoir, is a poignant book about the challenges encountered by both parents and children as they cope with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The authors, Audrey and Larry Jones, provide a sensitive, knowlegdeable, and often humorous account of the obstacles inherent in raising children with ADHD. They describe their personal journey, from dating to marraige to parenthood and grandparenthood. As the authors tell their family’s story, each of them stops along the way to reflect on the personal impact of the children's challeneges and to share their perspective's on how they might have handled things differently. This book will be an inspiration for the thousands of families who are confronted with ADHD.

Shannon Christmas will provide an update on the latest tools and changes available from the various DNA Testing companies to assist you with analyzing your DNA matches. Through The Trees Blog is authored by Shannon Christmas, an experienced genealogist specializing in genetic, colonial American, and African American genealogy in Virginia and the Carolinas. He serves as a 23andme Ancestry Ambassador, administrator of the Captain Thomas Graves of Jamestown Autosomal DNA Project, and as a co-administator of The Hemings-Jeffereson-Wayles-Eppes Autosomal DNA Project and The Macon DNA Project. A genetic genealogy instructor on the faculty of the Midwest African American Genealogy Institute, Shannon has a special interest in harnessing the power of autosomal DNA to verify and extend pedigrees, assess the veracity of oral history, and reconstruct ancestral genomes.         

Ric Murphy will explore the history of the 20 and odd African captives that arrived in Virginia around 1619 and planted the seeds of the American slave trade. This is the first group of Africans to go on record to be sold as involuntary laborers. A Boston native, Ric Murphy is an educator, historian, and award-winning author of several books and historical publications. Long before he started writing, Murphy had always heard about his rich family background, which led him to begin as a hobby — genealogical research. His family lineage dates to the earliest colonial periods of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Jamestown, Virginia. Mr. Murphy’s lineage has been evaluated and accepted by several heredity societies, including the Daughters of the American Revolution; the National Society of the Sons of Colonial New England; the Sons of the American Revolution; the Sons of the Union Veterans of the Civil War; and the Sons and Daughters of the U. S. Middle Passage.