Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society

Interested in ? Next Tuesday, March 12th, special guests, including two genealogists, will join us to learn about how to research unknown parentage. Register to attend today! https://bit.ly/438i0h0

Join us February 2 -4, 2024 in Raleigh, NC!

Genealogist helps more than 100 N.C. families trace their lineage Desi Campbell has published at least 14 books

We mourn the loss of Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall (June 27th, 1929 - August, 29th, 2022) beloved friend of Whitney Plantation and renowned historian of African culture and contributions throughout the Americas. Dr. Hall's book, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, is considered the seminal book of Afro-Creole history and has received numerous awards. Perhaps Dr. Hall's most monumental work is her contributions to the field of African American genealogy. Hall built the Louisiana Slave Database composed of 107,000 entries documenting the people enslaved in Louisiana from 1719 with the arrival of the first slave ship directly from Africa to 1820 when the domestic slave trade from the East Coast became the almost exclusive supplier of slave labor to the Lower South. Hall found the names of the enslaved people in official documents located in parish courthouses, the notarial archives, the Old US Mint, the public library in New Orleans, the state archives in Baton Rouge and university special collections. Beyond plantation inventories and criminal cases, Hall also identified enslaved people in wills, marriage contracts, leases, seizures for debt, mortgages of slaves, and reports of deaths. Whitney Plantation's Alles Gwendolyn Hall is named in her honor and contains the 107,000 entries found in her database. The database has helped thousands of African Americans find ancestors, connect families, and trace cultural roots. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall taught at the University of New Orleans and Rutgers University, and been recognized by numerous professional awards. She was a prolific writer of articles and books, most of whose subjects deal with African-American and Afro-Creole Culture. We are eternally grateful for Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's contributions to African American history and for her loving support of Whitney Plantation. Rest in power. We will miss you.

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Our traveling exhibit, We Built This: Profiles of Black Architects and Builders of NC, debuts this weekend at the Dix Park Chapel in Raleigh. The exhibit (and forthcoming docuseries by Chris Everett and book) has been a long collaborative process. The exhibit only includes profiles of 28 individuals, which barely scratches the surface of this rich and important history. We’ve received stories, combed newspaper archives, and followed leads for so many more buildings and individuals that need to be shared. We also recognize that it may be a while before everyone gets a chance to see the exhibit in person.

So, to celebrate the exhibit’s debut, we will be sharing one story a week for the rest of 2022 as our series. Some of the stories are featured in the exhibit, many are not. Sometimes we may just share posts of others who are working so hard to research this area. Thank you so much to the ongoing work of Black Craftspeople Digital Archive, Black Wide-Awake, NCModernist, NC African American Heritage Commission, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and so many others we’ll highlight over the next year!

Virtual Presentation with Local Genealogists - Wednesday, January 12th

PBS NC Preview Screening of Finding Your Roots and Virtual Discussion Preview Screening of PBS's Finding Your Roots, Season 8 with Henry Louis Gates Jr. & Virtual Discussion