Tony Burroughs is a professional genealogist and author. He recently wrote an article for the Anderson Cooper blog, AC360, that appears on CNN:
Many African Americans have longed to know their African roots, especially because our language and heritage have been destroyed by colonizers.
Historians have long documented that large numbers of Blacks were brought from different areas in Africa to what is now the United States. But in genealogy research, researchers have to prove the identity of specific individuals, and then document and prove relationships of them to their ancestors.
Genealogical proof is similar to that required in a probate court where relatives of the deceased have to be identified in order to distribute assets of the deceased. But the Board for Certification of Genealogists actually has a higher standard of proof for genealogy than a probate court.
There are several challenges to connect one’s ancestral genealogy back to Africa.
The full story is available at http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/17/why-re-tracing-our-african-roots-is-so-difficult.
I found out when I and Barbara Brown finished our book, Black Roots in South-Eastern Connecticut, that a community approach to African-American Genealogy must be completed in the NUCLEUS areas of the United States. Once we completed this process in SE Connecticut, thousands of descendants of that area can plug into the results, and understand their American Roots, in tens of cases in the book, slave owners were revealed, and the researcher could start the process of documenting their African roots. Utilizing DNA can also add to their results.
My father, a Cape Verdean considered himself a Colored American, even though his birth certificate had him listed as White. He married my mother whose roots go back to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello plantation. I consider myself an African-American. That is the challenge to the "AFRICAN" only approach
Posted by: Dr. James M. Rose | July 19, 2009 at 06:54 AM