In honor of the many U. S. veterans that have served in our armed forces throughout the history of this great nation, the African American Genealogy Examiner column today will provide instructions on accessing several free records databases available online at the website of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
During the struggle for civil rights, many brave men and women sacrificed their lives to improve the lives of Americans of all races. Unfortunately, because of lingering institutional racism in the South, the murders of these civil rights workers were not all investigated to their fullest, and quite a few went unsolved. The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently announced its "Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative," to try to identify the next-of-kin of some of the victims of these cases.
This column has previously focused on African-American genealogy blogs, in the articles Shout-outs to African-American Genealogy Blogs and More shout-outs to African-American genealogy blogs. A third edition soon forthcoming will spotlight several new genealogy blogs. The responsible genealogist, however, would be advised to learn more about United States history, including how it affected African-Americans. History blogs are a vital source for keeping up with current perspectives as well as newly available historical resources, many of which may provide genealogically useful information.
In an earlier entry, this column reported on several resources available for online African-American research in Virginia. Many more resources are now available, some becoming so just in the past three months since that report, necessitating another visit to the subject.