Founders

In February 1989, Gettysburg College's Harry Matthews established an African American genealogy program to increase black student attendance. Matthew's work was only one of the more recents efforts to encourage black Americans to trace their genealogy - a topic first disparaged in an article from the June 6, 1850 edition of Philadelphia's Public Ledger associating African lineage with that of monkeys. One of the earliest notes of "negro genealogy" in Alabama was a declaration in the December 5, 1916 Andalusia Star that anyone of such lineage would never vote in Covington County.

By February 1994, papers like the Montgomery Advertiser revealed Frazine Taylor of the Alabama Department of Archives and History among other scholars were changing African American genealogy from a weapon of racist stereotypes to one of connecting black citizens to their enslaved ancestors . Taylor held workshops throughout the 1990s and 2000s guiding black researchers in navigating "genealogical brick walls" like the 1870 federal census that made tracing the journey from slavery to freedom difficult. By February 2007, Mary Jones Fitts and Lovie Warren worked with the Black Belt African American Genealogical and Historical Society in sharing research regarding Black life in Marengo County. They have now combined efforts with Mobile teacher Courtney Davis-Ellis to continue helping Black genealogists uncover and pass down their family histories to future generations.