International African-American Museum Awarded Two Million Dollars in Support by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Slave Trade, Africa, 1899 (Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston, et. al., public domain courtesy of the New York Public Library).

Leaders of a new museum under development in United States have announced important new funding which is expected to greatly enhance African-American family history research across the globe. The two million dollar award was made by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the International African American Museum — a new educational facility which is slated to be built in Charleston, South Carolina, where roughly half of all enslaved Africans were brought after being forcibly transported via the Transatlantic Slave Trade prior to the end of the American Civil War.

The funding is expected to support not just the creation of the IAAM Center for Family History, but to help make it “[o]ne of the crown jewels of the experience at the museum,” according to Joseph P. Riley, the longtime former mayor of Charleston and lifetime IAAM board member. “Because of this generous donation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the center will catapult into a level of excellence that simply would not be achievable” otherwise.

During his announcement of the donation at RootsTech’s 9th family history conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, elder David A. Bednar explained that the church is supporting IAAM’s Center for Family History at this early juncture of its development because its leaders and members “value the strength that comes from learning about … families. The museum will not only educate its patrons on the important contributions of Africans who came through Gadsden’s Wharf and Charleston, it also will help all who visit to discover and connect with ancestors whose stories previously may not have been known.”

Also speaking at the Salt Lake event was Martin Luther King III, son of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The younger King noted that the collaboration between the IAAM and the church was very much in line with the efforts of his father to create a “beloved community.”

Prior to this The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its FamilySearch International were instrumental in increasing access to African heritage records, including letters and contracts which were created immediately after the American Civil War as part of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

When its doors open on the site of the former Gadsden’s Wharf in Charleston in the year 2021, the IAAM and its family history center are expected to deliver not only a world-class museum experience, but to serve as a “memorial and site of conscience” which will help visitors better understand and appreciate “the history, sacrifices and contributions of Americans of African descent,” in a way that “contribute[s] to a more complete and honest articulation of American history.”

Genealogy – Turning Heartbreak into an Opportunity to Inspire Others

By The Contemplative Genealogist©™

“Genealogy will break your heart.” That cautionary advice was given to me as a beginning family history researcher by one of the longer serving members of a state genealogy society where I was volunteering.

Telling me that there would be many fun discoveries ahead, she also cautioned that there would be breathtaking moments of sadness and disappointment – periods when I would wish that I could reach through the folds of time to grab an ancestor and shake him awake to make him change his bad boy ways – or bear hug a great-grandmother or grand aunt forced to bury yet another child.

The adventure has been an extraordinary one. Working on my own family’s paternal and maternal trees – as well as those of other family members, friends and clients – and those of an entire Civil War regiment, I have often been struck by the ways in which one simple piece of paper can make present day women and men feel as if they’re meeting centuries-dead relatives face-to-face. In several cases, I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to help others finally understand why their own lives may have unfolded the way they have.

Distant relatives who were institutionalized. Civil War-era boys who suffered through incarceration at the infamous Andersonville Prison only to die within a few short months of arriving home. Acts of unspeakable domestic violence. A young boy sent to an orphanage when his single mom could no longer care for him. Children who died in infancy from diseases that, only a few years later, would be eradicated or easily treated. A mother, eight months pregnant, suddenly widowed when her husband was felled by a heart attack.

The heartrending snapshots of ancestors’ lives about which that older, wiser genealogist had warned me. But, with a willingness to dig for the details behind a single sentence found on an Internet cemetery memorial or a U.S. Census sheet, many of these hints at tragedy have turned out to be so much more.

Stories of courage, kindness, redemption, and triumph in the face of overwhelming odds that have the capacity to make us realize that we, like our ancestors before us, are made of sterner stuff. That we are capable of surviving almost anything – and that all of us have it within us, as individuals, to change the world for the better in our own unique and important ways.

So, if you’re reading this as someone who is researching your own or another’s family history? Be a Mensch. Try to uncover – and then share – the full story of the person you’re profiling (if it’s appropriate and okay with living family members). Present not only the fact that someone did time, but the why of the crime. Determine what might have been at the root of one parent’s decision to leave a family behind or place a child up for adoption.

Consider doing so even if you’re working on the profile of someone who was only a distant relative. You might be the one, single person who takes the time to uncover a gem of a story that hundreds of other amateur genealogists skipped, thinking it wasn’t relevant to their respective research efforts.

At a minimum, you’ll be demonstrating genuine compassion for the individual you’re profiling by portraying the person as fully and accurately as possible. In so doing, you might just end up with the opportunity to write a great human interest story which captures the attention of a larger reading audience.

 

Image: Rescue of Jules Duruof and his wife off the Skagerrak. Source: U.S. Library of Congress (public domain).