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Black History Revealed

Research Strategies for African American Genealogy

Join us for a three-part genealogy workshop series, designed to guide you on how to start building your family tree, apply advanced research strategies, and uncover the lives of your ancestors.

Join us for a three-part genealogy workshop series, Black History Revealed: Navigating African American Genealogy and Celebrating Family Legacies, designed to guide you from getting started in building your family tree, to applying advanced research strategies to extend it, to uncovering the lives and contributions of your ancestors. Live discussion and Q&A will follow each session.

All sessions will occur in Room 401-D in the Conference Center. All sessions are limited to 25 participants and registration is required for each session. Registration will close two days before the workshop.

Second Session: Research Strategies for African American Genealogy

A key challenge for African American researchers is finding and interpreting nineteenth-century documentation. For both free people of color and enslaved, the institutions of racism and involuntary bondage often curtailed the documentation of people of color. Learn about research methods to extend the scope of African American genealogical research and reassemble our historic families

About The Presenters

Luke Alexander is a genealogist and community historian focusing on African-American and Indigenous heritage in the Carolinas. He has ancestry from several of the earliest recorded families of African origin in America, along with being of direct descent from the Lumbee, Waccamaw, and Cape Fear Native American nations.

Luke serves as vice-president of the Benjamin and Edith Spaulding Descendants Foundation, Inc. engaged in philanthropic activities in his ancestral hometown Farmers Union, NC. Luke is an inducted member of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) with lineage from his 4th great-grandfather William (Loughry) Lowry (1758-1847), a patriot ancestor of the Lumbee and Tuscarora communities of Robeson County, NC. Luke also serves as Librarian General of the Society of the First African Families of English America (SOFAFEA).

Luke has provided historical commentary on-air for WECT News, the NBC affiliate in Wilmington, NC. With co-author Andre Kearns, Luke was published in the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS) Journal (2020) and the inaugural SOFAFEA Journal (2022) with articles on their shared ancestor Emanuel Cumbo, a free man of Angolan descent who owned land near Jamestown, Virginia circa 1667. Luke is also an administrator of DNA research projects with Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) and GEDmatch.

Tyrone Goodwyn has been researching his family since he was fifteen years old.  His mother was born in the southeastern tip of North Carolina, where her free people of color landed circa the 1750s. As the son of a Pender County Jacobs, he is related to most of the other FPOC surnames across the region and the South.  His father’s line hailed from central Virginia, Dinwiddie County.

Born and raised in Tidewater Virginia, he is a graduate of The College of William and Mary, Old Dominion University, and George Mason University. His degrees are in Marketing. and Information Systems. He was a Developer, Systems Architect, and Director in telecommunications for decades.

Retired, he is currently working with Colonial Williamsburg and Custis museums identifying the persons enslaved by the Custis/George Washington/Robert E. Lee family dynasty, from 1600s Eastern Shore to 1800s Mt. Vernon and Washington DC. He is on the board of the North Carolina Genealogy Society; and is a member of the League of the Descendants of the Enslaved of Mount Vernon. He has lived in Washington DC since 1991, and the DMV since 1985.

First Session: Getting Started with African American Genealogy

Date: Saturday, Feb. 3, at 11 a.m.

Are you thinking about building your family tree or maybe you have started but need help on where to look next?  Learn how to start uncovering your family history's fascinating world. Register here to attend this session.

Third Session: Uncovering Black History in Your Family Tree

Date: Saturday, Feb. 24, at 11 a.m.

Delve beyond family names, dates, and locations to uncover the vibrant lives of your ancestors. Explore advanced research techniques to help you better root your family in history as well as recognize and celebrate the significant contributions your family has made to history (local and global). Register here to attend this session.

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