Juneteenth Discussion (Thom Reed Live)

as we're starting off um we want to talk and i'm wendy from family search and i've had the opportunity to do these and tom will you tell us who you are tom reed family search as well you got your shirt on and and tom we actually did an interview a couple weeks ago on instagram that we'll have to let people know about we were so energetic talking all about um memories and stories and and i'm excited i know and her sweet potato pie that we have that video for okay but today um we want to just get started and we have a lot to talk about i'm really really excited to be back and we have been on hold and on pause from live streaming for a little while and that is due to the activities that have been going on and we wanted to make sure to give um to be sensitive and give voice to this space and we appreciate um the chance that we have to share something from um our president so family search is sponsored by the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints and our president russell m nelson has shared a couple of statements and i would like to as we are you know talking a little bit about juneteenth today which i think is so exciting and important i want to preface it with some words from from president nelson and so i'm going to read just a few paragraphs and in our comments in our chat we'll put the link to the entire statement and then after that we're going to just go into juneteenth and i just want to say welcome to everybody for joining we appreciate you being here and um okay here's what president nelson has said we join with many throughout this nation and around the world who are deeply saddened at recent evidence of racism and a blatant disregard for human life we abhor the reality that someone deny others respect and the most basic of freedoms because of the color of his or her skin we are also saddened when these assaults on human dignity lead to escalating violence and unrest the creator of us calls on each of us to abandon attitudes of prejudice against any group of god's children any of us who has prejudice towards another race needs to repent during the savior's earthly mission he constantly ministered to those who were excluded marginalized judged overlooked abused and discounted as his followers can we do anything less the answer is no we believe in freedom kindness and fairness for all of god's children and that is part of what president russell um nelson has said on on this issue and we chose to come back on juneteenth because it's an important topic and it's something to be celebrated and family search has worked with partners and we're going to talk all about that today specifically and and we at family search want to contribute to the conversation in a way that we know how and that is through genealogy and so tom you're here joining us today and we mentioned that your 12 year old daughter is celebrating her juneteenth birthday faith by getting fabulous donuts but let's get started about talking about um yourself and then we'll go into genealogy research for those of african descent yeah tell us about juneteenth yeah i was going to say yeah probably talk so this is a historic day and i'm so glad that you know we we did give space for what needed to be you know talked about in the community but we're coming back on a day that's significant to to my people guilty so it was june 19th of 1865 when major general gordon granger came into galveston texas and had federal orders to help to read um the emancipation of those who were formerly enslaved although the emancipation proclamation had been put into effect in 1863 went into fact january 1st 1863 from abraham lincoln those in tech the news hadn't reached all those who have been enslaved in the southern states until gordon granger came into galveston texas on june 19 1865 and helped those individuals understand they were free and it was a day of celebration jubilation you know again in 1865 and ever since then that that has been a significant day in the african american community so there's been celebrations all over the nation on juneteenth which is kind of putting the words june and 19th together that's what that's where you get kind of the june team from and so th this you know something that my family's all known about for a lot of and many not a lot of people know about it i mean it's it's it's kind of african-american freedom day or also known as you know emancipation day and so there's celebrations that happen even in the state of utah i'm so happy that our governor signed into law to recognize juneteenth as a state holiday and there's all kinds of celebrations that are going on and things like that and so we at family search have used this day because it's been significant you know we've been doing the work of working to help people of african descent for two decades many people don't know you know we're not trying to talk about things there's a lot of things we do behind the scenes but for two decades we've been trying to help people of african descent and more recently we've used this day juneteenth to announce different things that would help the black community so we're here today five years i remember this five years five years from when we kicked off the freedmen's bureau project which was just this massive massive project i was um sitting in salt lake in a conference room with a bunch of family search employees while you were um tell us about your experience and what you were doing and we were watching you um speak and on stage yeah it was it was amazing it you know one of the things i really like about my community the black community is how we come together on important things right and there's a lot of coming together now and we did this on juneteenth june 19th of 2015 we came together at the california african-american museum we were so gracious to be hosted by george davis the executive director of that museum where we launched we did a broadcast to announce this project that we wanted to undertake with the community the freedmen's bureau project and so it was good to have representatives from the you know afro-american historical and genealogical society we had my friends tamil attend penny lewis and had sherry camp there we had a representative from the national museum of african american history and culture uh hollis gentry's the genealogy genealogist that was there uh we had our host um kim bae and jermaine sullivan they were on meet the mormons they were the ones who kind of hosted the whole thing and then we had janet scott who had been a an appointee in president obama's cabinet who was also there who spoke i mean it was a long list of speeches diane watson was an ambassador and she spoke there it was great to hear her remarks um and then we had also we heard from a member of the quorum of the twelve apostles of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints elder d todd christopherson and so all of us came together and there were you know hundreds of people in the museum there to hear the announcement and and many of you probably nationwide all over the world because we broadcast it were there that day five years ago when we kicked off that project let us know in the comments if you watched that um five years ago when tom was there and with all those people that he he talked about yeah so and tell us what you what you kicked off so again kicked off the friedman's bureau project so the friedman bureau records is what we were focused on and these were records that were created at the end of the civil war to help um indigent african americans who had newly become newly emancipated and those white southerners who were poor and devastated by the civil war kind of recover it was you know an organization that was under um the department of the army and and they helped established um help people get on their feet and established you know freedman bureau offices to provide food and shelter and housing and all these things and over the course of their operation from 1865 to 1872 there were lots of documents that they kept and interactions from different people and the national archives and records administration held those documents microfilmed them and then digitized them and a lot of them have rich genealogical data and so our project was to take a select group of those that had the most genealogical relevance and take the digitized images and index them so transcribe the names dates and places of the individuals in there to create a searchable database so that people could find their family in these records these records for slave ancestral research are like a critical bridge between the 1870 brick wall and into the this period of enslavement in the united states and so that bridge having that bridge and having making them searchable was was our goal and so we had 1.5 million digital images and over the course of one year one year 25 550 individual volunteers helped to transcribe and index those records and we were able to put them online by juneteenth 2016. so another date a year later celebration people celebrate the completion of that project and make them available to anybody who wants to access them through family search so and we'll we're putting links in the chat for those of you who are watching and um so tom just talked about kicking off the freedmen's bureau project five years ago and so this is sort of a celebration of that and and tom i would love for you to share maybe something that personal that you found in the records and maybe even if you have some examples that you can share with our our viewers and kind of walk us through let me go ahead and share my screen and hopefully oh yes everybody's seeing you able to see this yes so as part of the project we created a website in partnership with all these entities called discover discoverfriedman.org and on that website it was where people would come during the project to come volunteer sign up to volunteer they'd learn about the project what they needed to do and could kind of help us you know move move this transcription and indexing project along well we completed the project but we still maintain the website because people can come here to search the records so literally you come here to discover freeman.org we have this big button called search records and and it drops down to the bottom where you can actually put in a name of an individual this is a simple search on this website um and so for example if you were to put in the name sarah knight what it does is it takes you over to family search where all these records are housed and looks at the various friedman bureau collections 14 of them that that we indexed and made available as a result of this project and shows you the results stop you with one thing these are all available for free for anybody this isn't a uh this currently that's not paid so anyone can search these records right totally free to search and things like that and so there's these 14 different collections that we indexed as part of the project and they've given these results so here we have a search result which has one of 20 of sarah knight but i know specifically that the sarah knight i was looking for is actually in mississippi and so i'm going to add that and refine the search criteria to look for my family member right and so here we find in the results now it's down to 16 results out of 80. we have we find sarah knight right and so sarah knight you click on here and you can actually go to what was indexed so what was the information that was taken off of the document that was put in the searchable database for people to find and you can actually see the record right so yeah go slow yeah we got to let this as you click on the record we'll we'll take some time with this because this is just this is so exciting and there's a personal connection to this okay that i want to share also but hopefully your viewers can see and and they'll go through you can go through these steps if you want to yourself but here is the image right and so we've got natchez mississippi i have this day united in matrimony joseph knight and it gives his address and sarah knight of natchez mississippi age of man 25 years color black uh deo of his father black deova's mother black lived with another woman no years separated from her no years age of woman 28 years color black her father a quarter white um her mother black and he says uh it talks about live with another man no they unitedly have two children um and there's the witness so this is the marriage certificate that was validated by the freedmen's bureau for joshua and sarah knight okay now here's the here's the interesting story with this hey i can't wait i i share this example on purpose because i was at keene university speaking at the amistad commission which new jersey um in keene universities in new jersey and they have every year a symposium where they take educators of social studies and educate them on things with black history and i was invited to come teach them about the freedmen's bureau records and this was actually on july um this is on july 31st of 2016. and so it was right after we finished the completion of the project and i just asked somebody in the room i said hey will you throw out a name let's go look let's do this whole thing you know starting back from discover friedman and we threw out a name this woman said look for night look for sarah night and i clicked on sarah night and we found this and this is her her second great grandmother's sister okay sarah knight was melvania knight who was sitting in the audience with me at keene university who just shouted out a random name this is her ancestor we found her ancestors record in the friedman's bureau marriage records that day just from a random search i have to say it was not random the ancestors were with us yes for sure but that i mean these are the kinds of discoveries that people can make with these types of records and this is you know kind of a bridge that helps them get into other records and start to do more in their genealogical you know research and this is one of the many things that have happened as from that five-year kickoff to the things we've done today and and tom like tell us about your role professionally because as everyone can you know can attest your energy is fantastic and i have to say you when you go travel and present like you bring home friends like tom's social network is huge and people just appreciate the enthusiasm that you have and so tell us what your role at family search is and then let's go into what are some other resources for people that are looking for their ancestors so my role my my title is kind of a long title deputy chief genealogical officer it sounds important it sounds really important but it's it's such a pleasure to serve under our chief genealogical officer for family search david renter who is a legend in the industry and he's been recognized you know world over for for what he's been doing he brought me on specifically to help family search with african heritage with connections with the professional genealogical community with genealogical soundness of family search as a product and an offering to the community and so basically my responsibilities are to reach out to the community to understand the needs of those who are researching african americans or people of african descent around the world so although i'm you know i am the deputy chief genealogical officer for african heritage and when we say that family search has created you know a team within us a virtual team that focuses on african heritage globally so not just in the united states and african american but you know our african brothers on the continent and sisters on the continent uh we've got a significant presence and lots of work that's happening there and you you traveled to africa a couple of years ago um that was part of this and what was that like 2016 was a very big year for me we finished the free miss bureau project went africa and we celebrated the freedmen's bureau project at the national museum of african american history and culture when it opened but um that trip to africa was life-changing for me it allowed me to see how i connect to my homeland and at family search we are about creating inspiring experiences that bring joy to all people as they discover their family and discover gather and connect with their family past present and future and so for me to go over there i didn't you know know before i went over there what my ethnic heritage specifically is i mean africa is a vast continent of 54 independent nations and so uh we can't treat them all as one but but it's you know i so i was happy to be in ghana and i came back with an increased desire immediately to try and connect with my african roots you know in some ways reclaim my african roots yes and so i came back i took a dna test with our partner ancestry and found out my ethnic origin and so i am nigerian i am cameroonian i'm congolese there's percentages in there i have roots in the motherland that now i know and i can claim and that's been one of the greatest developments i think in genealogy in the past five years is genetic genealogy and dna being able to connect people you know just take those records you know some sometimes the i have brick walls in my research and the record stop but being able to connect with a homeland in dna for me was great especially after having been there having been able to you know be in villages where we're collecting oral histories that was why i was there it was actually documented tell us just a little bit about that i feel like we may have spoken about this in one of our other live streams but for those who aren't aware i think this is a great product yeah i think i think it's important to know you know like we said family searches had a presence among people of african descent trying to do that and one of the ways we're doing that on the continent in africa is collecting oral histories we've contracted with organizations that go into villages and they interview the griots the storytellers those who have the memory of the genealogy and the history of that group and they we actually record those we transcribe them we put them into kind of a database of the families that existed in these villages and over the course of the next three or four years as we continue to collect these um we'll be we'll start to publish those and make those publicly available for anyone who has a connection act especially those who are on the continent this is breakthrough because many you know have left their you know let's say their ancestral village or or the villages in the rural areas and come to the larger cities for greater opportunity which is great but they don't know necessarily the history past grandparents or great grandparents in many instances and by us collecting this information it makes it available for anyone who's interested in connecting sometimes it goes back 13 14 17 generations i mean just amazing employees in history from one interview wow yeah okay i i appreciate you sharing that i i remember when you went and came back and it was just such it was so cool you did a presentation and talked about some of your highlights okay so let's go a little bit and and for those that are watching um we will be taking some questions for um tom and i think the focus is research for those of african descent but tell us a little bit about we've talked about family research discover friedman what else is available for anyone doing that type of research oh we have that to cover but but before that tell us about i know you have a really cool story what's been your most memorable experience in the last five years doing this kind of work and research i've got i've got two one is the experience with a celebrity another is my personal experience so i don't know which one do you which road should i think we need both but let's start with the celebrity okay okay well i was prepared to share so so let me go ahead and share here real quick so you can hopefully see yes who this is so oh this is the end one i i need to go back you can click yeah let me let me go back actually uh uh oh i went i went forward instead of back so hold on but this is i was actually um if you saw the picture it was actually of levar burton and he came to roots tech in 2017 after the completion so we had this big completion of the freedmen's bureau project and there he came and he talked about kind of the stories and things that it shaped his life it actually was interesting why he came as part of the friedman's bureau project we actually did um we were able to partner with the history channel because they were going to make they were remaking the roots mini-series so you know levar burton is from the original mini-series 1977 um abc he was the original kunta kente and as they were making remaking this in 2016 uh he was one of the executive producers of this and the the producers got wind of the friedman's bureau project and wanted to contribute right and so we made a connection with lavar there and then invited him to come to roots tech and he shared this remarkable story you know the stories of his life and the people that have impacted his life right and so let me scroll down here real quick this is part of a presentation i think i gave um in little rock arkansas um quite a while ago and it goes through things like the freedmen's bureau project and all the things that we've done there but a lot of the work you've done for the last five years yeah okay here we are a little bit right um and so um so he came and as as he spoke at roots tech afterwards we actually presented him with his family history and so we had done work our our research vip research team i i helped a little bit not a lot with it and presented him with his family history and you can see how it impacted him just at this is when i walked out on stage and just had the book right um but out during the course of my time with him on stage you know you see the emotion and what overcame him and what at the end he was in tears we were all into we were in tears and those that weren't there what's happening right now is you on this huge stage is there's his records there's records of his family so he's looking at these historic records for the first time and that's his expression he's seeing their names for the first time he's seeing his family who were enslaved in wilkinson county mississippi who were eventually emancipated he's seeing their names for the first time and and and i the the name of the presentation that i give you can probably see the title is connecting with ancestors completes us because he talked about how that changed his life he was the person who played kunta kente who inspired the story that helped millions of african-americans begin this journey of discovery of their their ancestral roots but he and he had never done it himself and so to be gifted this he was 59 almost 60 he's he just he called it you know a godsend he said it was you know something that changed his life forever being able to know his history and see their names and we felt it we the ancestors were there there was water coming i mean it was an emotional moment and people have these emotional moments and and we want to try and help facilitate those emotional moments right we want people to discover this stuff yes thank you thank you for sharing that tell us about your own personal discovery um and how that's impacted you and i i love when you share about that lavar burton story because it was beautiful and memorable to witness so thank you but let's talk about you let's let's let's talk about here i'll talk about me um let's see here so i'm going to show you my ancestor i'm going to go to the tree for tom pruitt okay um and just to tell you the story i'm thomas reed iii my dad's thomas reed jr my grandfather is tom reed his father is ed reed and it and then he met uh uh ed reed married hold on let me let me make sure i get to this properly so i'm going to get back to let's go here we're going to start at my grandfather and just to say hi we have lots of viewers who are appreciating this and um i think deanne dodds is saying hello and so we're glad that you are all here and we're we're thrilled to be back live streaming and kicking it off today on juneteenth with tom reed and he's sharing a personal discovery that he's had um so welcome to everybody okay keep going okay so um here's my grandfather thomas reed my and and eddie reed is actually the my great my my great grandfather where i'm stuck right i don't know his parents i've been researching for years and still haven't found it but related to him is tom pruitt his wife was our libya tom is there so in my research i actually found out that tom pruitt owned land in the area where eddie reed was born and married and where my grandfather my grandfather was married in mississippi but he was born in morango county hoboken is the town which is not new jersey hoboken marango alabama um and so i'm i found this indication that tom pruitt owned land and so i happened to be on a trip i was able to go speak at the alabama state general alabama state university genealogical colloquium alabama state university's historic black college and so my colleague freezing tenure invited me out to teach them about the freedmen's bureau project but i'm in alabama so i gotta go see what this land is all about and so i actually traveled to the county courthouse i went and i found the deed and the people at the county courthouse helped me identify where in the county the the plot of land was he actually owned 80 acres at the time he it had gone out of the family and eventually been sold to a lumber company but that the land was clearly marked and one of the things as the the assessor helped me find this they indicated a pruitt cemetery so here i am going cool so i drive out to rural alabama right in marango county and i'm trying to find this you know this place and it's it's it's temper country so like there's not a lot of mapping and stuff like that but what i did have is i had a point on a google map where the cemetery was supposed to be so i've literally got out of my car and went hiking through the woods in the middle of the summer to try and find this cemetery and i found it oh okay this is exciting wow well this is a picture of one of the headstones that's in this cemetery let me see if i can actually make it bigger for you um so here's here's one of the this was the only thing that i found a couple of things but this was the only upright one that i could see and really unfortunately i was not able i was had to go on a flight and so i had to drive back to montgomery from marango county so i i took this picture but i found this place and i found all these stones that were on the ground over covered in the middle of you know the forest basically where the pruitt's have been buried wow and and i don't know the story about charles coulter davis but but i mean it's when i saw this i actually i cried because he was seven years old when he died you know and and was born in brooklyn new york i mean what a story this this little thing holds charles coulter davis what a name first of all brooklyn new york right and he he was seven years old when he died and they put they had they they cared so much about him in 1867 to put our loved one on this headstone like this was again this was like connecting with the ancestors completing me the ancestors were leading me marching me along the way because i was literally lost in the middle of these woods and i was really scared i wasn't gonna be able to get out but but i was i was led here i was led here and and i'm so thankful for all the work that people are doing to document anything that helps my people make a connection with their ancestors in this case somebody wrote down that here's the pruitt cemetery right and so i was able to go there and find it and you best believe i'm going back yes you are so so i appreciate like i i so appreciate your you sharing that story and i i think we'd love to hear from people watching it the types of experiences they've had but what and you've also talked about family search resources what are some other resources for people who are doing research in this space um what would you recommend what are some partners i would recommend heavily so one of our kind of newer partnerships if you will has been with the international african american museum center for family history in charleston south carolina and our good friend tony carrier i've had a relationship with her for years she's in in i'm helping to create a physical center for family history within this museum which means so much more enslaved people came through charleston south carolina and came into the united states than any other port right that's kind of ground zero for slavery in america and they're building this museum on that space and so we partnered with them in fact at roots tech last year 2019 we had martin luther king the third that came as well as the the um ceo of the international african-american museum michael moore came with his group and accepted a check on from the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints on behalf of family search to help build the center for family history there and so if you go to cfh dot i a a m museum you'll put the you'll put the url you go there that is right now it's a virtual um center right because they're still building the museum which will be complete hopefully in the fall of 2021 um but that's one of the partners that that she is pranking out content and giving trying to give back so much to the community tony care is absolute gem to work with she's you know a seasoned veteran researcher and she's just trying to help the community through what she's doing at the center for family history in fact one of the cool things is part of our partnership for black history month this year we partnered with the center for family history at iam on this campaign we called finding your roots 29 ways in 29 days where we took the 29 days of black history month and we highlighted collections that would help people in african-american research and the way they were highlighted is a blog post from the center for family history at iam so she took people through tutorials on friedman bureau marriage records on the 1860 slave schedules that we had recently published she went through 29 different collections to help people understand and so that's she is an educator she yeah i love working with her and so if anybody is interested go look at the center on facebook there's facebook groups um out there so she has a cfh the center for family history iam facebook group that you can join and get regular updates and teaching things um there's so many i mean it's how how long do we have to talk mention we we want to get to some questions from our viewers but what are some other resources as well i know i've heard you talk about a few more so another another one that's that's in development as well is enslaved.org so the digital humanities center at michigan state university run by dean rayberger and walter hawthorne is actually putting together a platform that will search multiple independent databases in one portal and what they're doing is they're studying the people of the historic slave trade and so they've partnered with other universities like harvard university emory university in atlanta university college of london uh you know colorado state at boulder vanderbilt university said there's actually seven different organizations that they partnered with where they're building this platform so now if you are trying to do slave ancestral research when this project is complete you'll be able to go to enslave.org type in a name and search and crawl these seven databases and we're working to include records from family search there too but this again is going to be a huge breakthrough the fact that they've undertaken this massive data genealogy problem and are trying to find a solution is going to be a huge help what about um i think i've heard you talk about slave voyages is there yes yes sir one so one of the the partners that enslave is working with is emory university and david altis dr david eltis was the principal investigator and created what's called the transatlantic slave trade database it is the definitive database that highlights all the voyages that left africa and came to the new world i think there was 34 000 voyages that are recorded in its database it tells where they left how much cargo in terms of how many souls were on board the ship where they landed in the new world who the captain of the ship was the name of the ship all kinds of things and through that process of documenting all that over the years that david altus did it he also created an african names database because in some instances there were named africans on these voyages that came to the new world that were recorded and so again if you're trying to do this slave ancestral research and you're stuck in and there's you know these this is kind of deep into the research right but this is the kind of stuff that's available that excites me go to slavevoyages.org and and watch they have a graphic on there they have our good friend henry lewis gates jr narrates a nice little video that explains all about the database and the work that dr altus has done and then they have this graphic that shows you across the years which ships went where right so you know the predominance of of those who left africa ended up in the caribbean and in brazil and so that's why family searches started to focus on people of african descent in those areas of the world too you know there were very few you know less than 400 000 that came to the united states and so there's lots of information about those individuals and those voyages that went to those other parts of the new world in the slave voyages database okay this and this is such great information and um i i appreciate this and we've got um someone asking how can we help how can they help and um what can people do to contribute to being able to find these types of records or names and we don't have the freedmen's bureau project anymore but what would you recommend we don't but there's there's lots of projects out there you know that i'm not you know i'd be remiss if i didn't acknowledge the challenges that are that are there in doing you know genealogy for african americans and so if if you want to get involved i think you have to get you know what brian stephenson says proximate with the problem right you've got to develop empathy and understand you know the plight of individuals you've got to kind of get in there and get to know it and so the best way to get in there is to volunteer for projects that are out there you know if you search for african-american genealogy projects do a google search you'll probably come up with a dozen or so different ways that you can get involved some of them you know that i recommend specifically as freedom on the move cornell university has has done a transcription of runaway slave ads that's kind of that's the general term is runaway slave ads to be more politically correct it's liberated people's the you know the stories of liberated people right um and so they've got a way for you to search those as well as continue to help them transcribe i know the national museum of african american history and culture has a friedman's bureau transcription project so we did you know the parts of those documents that had most of the information that was genealogically relevant but there were a lot of correspondence in the friedman's bureau that had individuals names that we didn't necessarily index and put as part of the project but the national museum of african american history and culture in washington dc is asking people to transcribe literally take every word from those documents and make those keywords searchable in their database that's you know so there's a couple things oh we've got something right now talk about what we have so we again our focus being on people of african descent in the in the diaspora and the caribbean we have as an organization have really tried to focus on how can we get at least twenty percent of vital records searchable for people of african descent in the caribbean okay and so we've we've have we've digitized records but we need indexers so if if you've ever done family search indexing which all those twenty five thousand five hundred fifty friedman bureau indexers have so if you've ever done any indexing come help us with this caribbean civil registration project that's available right now on familysearch.org if you go to familysearch.org indexing webms indexing and try and find a batch search for caribbean and you'll come across these records we we desperately need or not desperately but we really want help i mean available as quickly as possible and help you know my brothers and sisters in jamaica and barbados and and so on and so forth be able to make discoveries like lavar burton did like melvania knight did like i was able to do right so please get involved lend a hand get proximate with the issues that help that you know exist among african-american genealogical researchers by by joining facebook groups but by also getting involved in these various projects okay and tom you are a wealth of information and i know that our moderators are putting things in the chat and so as you continue to provide resources we'll make sure that those are available and i think we have time to take some questions are you okay with that is there any any other any other partner projects you want to mention before we do questions of course there's so many so the the big one that's on the horizon and it's it's not necessarily ready for prime time but i want to mention it okay called reclaiming our african roots or roar is the acronym right and what in in our work with various institutions and organizations we found that we all share a common desire to make this information for people of african descent more readily available and so we're working to formalize a partnership with multiple entities that are all focused on the same issue of trying to make records of people of african descent more easily available and so you know we've had conversations obviously with the folks and enslaved and we've we've worked with the folks on the tony carey at iam's center for family history and the afro-american historical and genealogical society and you know our black ancestry and other institutions and organizations as well to be a part of this most recently we've had conversations with um the ellis island foundation and their american center for uh now i'm gonna i'm gonna mess up their academy you're dropping acronyms like jackie schalk look her up but we've had conversations with her about being part of this roar consortium or coalition of multiple entities that are working together to provide significant resources capital technology to to really boost this we know at family search we can't do this alone we love to be a supporter of the industry and try and help and we've done all that we can but we know we can't do it alone i told you before friedman's bureau project was about the community coming together right and roar is about bringing the community together and so it's still in the development stages we don't have a website or anything yet or don't you know don't have anything people can do immediately to get involved with roar we're working at institutions but i see out of roar coming additional projects that that the general public can get involved in many of them we are working on the development of that now but to me reclaiming our african roots is what's going to make a significant difference across the globe for people of african descent trying to discover their ancestors okay so sheila and i'm sure everybody else is wondering how do they um is there a place they can follow you or where would they go to stay up to date on what's happening in this space what do you what do you recommend you've got some fans i i recommend i wish we could put the link and maybe we can we have an african heritage newsletter from family search that we send out every quarter um our marketing coordinator kayla jackson has been good to help develop that and so we'd love to to if we can grab that link and put it in the chat here people can opt in to receive emails about the various things that that we're doing at family search for people of african descent um personally you can follow me my handle on all social media is i am tom reed so facebook instagram twitter snapchat um i've only done a couple of tick tocks you need to do more i love i love it's fun but yeah follow me personally if you want to um absolutely and and as we develop you know again with roar that's probably going to become the definitive website and source of all things related to african heritage genealogy as we kind of get move along the way but subscribe to our newsletter if you can follow me on social media i'll keep you up to date on various things come to the family search wiki so if you go to familysearch.org and look at our wiki then you can also learn tons of stuff there so if you want more education if you want to see tutorials if you wanted like whatever research helps all kinds of things our family search wiki is where it's at and we we do a good job of trying to keep that up to date with the latest resources and information available okay we've got a couple of questions as we're narrowing the end and just you know we're so grateful that everyone is joining us and asking these questions do you know anything about i don't know if this is in your area of expertise which is vast and wide um people are asking about indexing projects in haiti do you have any idea of those availability okay i know i know we do have an active indexing project in haiti um but i believe like in indexing we have public projects and then we have groups that adopt projects and do them themselves and so for the haiti indexing project it's a closed project but we'll have to figure out a way to get information on how people can can join the group but because you join indexing groups on family search you can do that and adopt those projects so for the haiti project hopefully we can find a link somehow to the group that has adopted that project that people can be accepted to so that they can then participate in indexing okay thank you um now we have a question that i think is really important and it's not necessarily something that family search has resources for but from a personal perspective michelle our friend michelle is asking how do people um specifically you know those of african descent or with different heritages like how do they deal with the painful discoveries that they may uncover and find as they're doing genealogical research from from your personal perspective what sort of advice would you give on how to handle you know absorbing this information which can be really painful yeah it is um at some point you discover things that you never knew that you maybe didn't want to know right about your family that happens with all of us it doesn't matter our ethnicity necessarily um genealogy some sometimes uncovers you know opens the the closet where those skeletons start to fall out and it's hard you know just acknowledge it first of all feel the feels you know don't don't apologize for how you feel about it but as you process it one of the things that i think is helpful is to again have empathy try and develop empathy and look through the lens of the time in which you're talking about and the circumstances in the situation that maybe individuals were in or came from or came through right because that makes a big difference we we at family search and in the genealogical community at large we it's more it's not about the names and dates and places but it's about the dash and about their lives and so the more that you can research the context of where they lived and where these in some of the circumstances around these individuals will give you a better perspective i think to manage how you feel about some of the uncomfortable things that you learn and and be willing to accept them our ancestors mistakes are not our mistakes we are not you know beholden to the sins of our fathers per se so yeah family members may have done some things that were unsavory and unpleasant and things like that but that burden of guilt shouldn't be on you because you weren't directly there right you can forgive yourself but you can also have empathy for those who are impacted by whatever it is your ancestor may have done and realize that they're hurting too right right and give some space for empathy in that regard so i think that's that's my advice on how to kind of handle the uncomfortable things is look through it in a different lens and do your best to kind of you know realize that it was a time and a place that you weren't a part of so you don't own any any of that you can only do what's in the here and now and you can impact the future but don't worry you can't change the past and that's what um i think when we had you on instagram you talked a lot about what you're doing as a dad and a son and a grandson to capture your stories and so how has learning about your past um helped you um kind of capture your future in your present like how has that impacted you i'm more committed to my family i think more than anything else you know um man why didn't you because i wanted to ask that question because i think and i think like like michelle's question is there's hard and painful things in our past and your response to be full of empathy i think that's so powerful and i think when we've learned and connected to our family and our heritage how does that help us today and our future and it changes you so so you're doing it makes me want to do traditions with my daughter faith whose birthday is today of having done this yes taking a picture and capturing it and uploading that picture to family search in our memories you know it makes me when i sit down with my father-in-law who's struggling a little bit with dementia when he shares those memories i open up the family search memories app and i record the audio right then so that my kids will be able to share with their grandchildren the stories of their third or second great grandfather that i'm trying to i wish i could have done more when i was younger but i'm i'm here now so i gotta i gotta forgive myself for my mistakes in the past and i'm here now and i'm trying to create traditions and i'm trying to capture those traditions for the future family you know we talk about family history we that doesn't necessarily mean the past it it can be the history that you're making now that will be history to those in the future and so as our family there there are tons of traditions that we have and things that we do that we try and commemorate and memorize and memorialize and and keep those at the forefront of our family traditions all right thank you for answering that personal question i i find it so inspiring because i think especially um the things that you've shared with us and and where you've come from and this i and we have we have another we have someone else who's asking questions about where else are friedman's records available is does ancestry or any of our partner sites have more so so no no i wouldn't say has more ancestry our partners you know we share a lot of content with them and we're grateful that that we do share content and make it available in multiple platforms they do have some of the freeman bureau records we have records on family search those records on family search are what comes through that discover freedman.org website so it's not like discover freeman.org is a separate entity it's just a website that takes you into the family search records but the national museum of african american history and culture excuse me we gave them a copy of those records at the end the conclusion of the freedmen's bureau project in december of 2016. and so if you go to that museum they have a special experience on the second floor in their robert frederick smith explore your family history center where you can search those friedman bureau records on on their platform and and connect with family search and ancestry while you're there as well oh okay thank you um tom i i just i i appreciate you and everyone for participating with us today to commemorate juneteenth and you know it's it's there's a lot that we can all learn and you have shared so much information with us i think our chat our moderators we had to have so many because you are dropping information left and right just as you do and your understanding of the space is i think such a gift to family search and to all of us so as we wrap up what else would you like what other message would you like to leave for those who are watching or will watch about researching um this this space those with african descent yeah i i the biggest message i can say is there's hope right the myth is you can't do this that's not true you know it starts with you for example and documenting what you know and going back and there their records that are readily available you know the 1940 u.s census my grandmother's in there right and and that connects to families you know that i might not know you know i'll get back to even ed reed but but if you if you start with yourself then you know you can go along the way and the other the other thing i said there's hope is because there's so many entities i've named several that and are making are trying to help and so if you're not having success today come back tomorrow there may be new information new things available um you know just try and stay motivated to try and find there's always things that that you know come online but also like it's not all online either so if you you know if you're struggling go to where your people are from go to your homeland if you can i went back to africa but i haven't been to my actual homeland there but um go to you know my homeland in morengo county alabama people can go to the county courthouses look at those records and find things that just aren't available online to do that research and it can be done be in it for the long haul you know it's not something you're going to just sit down at 3am and you're going to be able to open up 20 generations of your family tree be in it for the long haul but it doesn't have to be daunting and overwhelming you know i take it in bite-sized chunks i spend about 15 minutes every day just kind of refreshing my genealogy skills and doing things on family search and ancestry and and reading blogs and trying to understand what's going on so take it in bite size pieces and and be committed for the long haul your family your ancestors will thank you you are your ancestors wildest dreams you know and and not only will your ancestors thank you your family will thank you too you'll become the family historian the source of information my dad is always calling me when is so-and-so's birthday because he knows that i got it you know that that i have that information i love being that resource for my family and i i hope that others take advantages of the tools and resources that are out there being developed which will continue to be developed so that they can be that resource and have these experiences too oh thank you so much tom thank you for taking the time with us and family search we are lucky to have you as part of our family and for those of you who are joining us we welcome you into our family as well and appreciate the time that you've taken to spend with us and tom's provided some great resources and we'll make sure to provide a link to that caribbean indexing project and we will be returning to a live streaming schedule next week so look for notifications but this was a beautiful way to kick it off here with you tom so thank you thank you everybody thank you so much wendy you're awesome i appreciate you providing this platform for me to share this information and for others at family search so that we can get this out to the community

Channel: FamilySearch

Views: 1,284

Rating: 5 out of 5

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Id: c41rzn34qlk

Length: 56min 13sec (3373 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020