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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.

On 20 October 2009, this column addressed the topic of Y-DNA testing for genealogical purposes. This relatively new development in science holds revolutionary potential for genealogy, especially African-American research. The most recent issue of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly (Sep 2009) contains the case study of an African-American family where Y-DNA testing revealed direct male line European ancestry.[1]

In the 1920 federal census for Leon County, Texas, a seventy-four year old African-American man named Jeff Clark lives with his sixty-four year old wife Hattie. Jeff was a farmer who owned his own farm, and worked his own land. The census further records that he was born in Alabama, as were both of his parents. His granddaughter also lived with them.

The Generations Project is a new reality series that helps those who have questions about their family history investigate their own identities by walking in the shoes of their ancestors. As they undertake these journeys, they often uncover the hidden identities in family pasts, and come to see that in many cases the best way to know who you are is to know who you came from.