Registration now closed

Black History Revealed

Uncovering Black History in Your Family Tree

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.

Third Session: Uncovering Black History in Your Family Tree

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). 

About The Presenter

Lisa Fanning is a lifelong genealogist and family historian who has spent the past 28 years uncovering her family's rich American history in the South and Midwest. Her research has led to studying enslavement and migration in middle Tennessee/Kentucky/Georgia, Tri-Racial Isolate communities in North Carolina, free African American settlements in southern Indiana, and the incredible journey of an African family emancipated in 1712 in Norfolk, VA.

Lisa is also a genetic genealogist who volunteers for the DNA Doe Project, Tulsa Race Massacre DNA Identification Project, and DNA Search Squad. Lisa has given multiple presentations on her family history and served as a genealogy consultant on Before the Bulldozers. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Genealogical Society and serves as the Society’s Chair of the Membership Committee and a member of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. Lisa also serves on the Board of Directors of the Society of the First African Families of English America and is a DNA Coordinator for the Midwest African American Genealogy Institute (MAAGI).

Lisa is an award-winning artist and has worked for professional associations for the past 30 years building pathways and developing initiatives to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in international affairs, education, training, medicine, and healthcare. She holds a BA in French and an MA in Intercultural Communication, specializing in French language and culture. 

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.

Second Session: Research Strategies for African American Genealogy

Date: Saturday, Feb. 10, at 11 a.m.

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. Register here to attend this session.

Upcoming events