Highlight: Online Research Tools

AfriGeneas
http://www.afrigeneas.com/
This privately held website that focuses on African Acestored Genealogy. The site’s mission is to provide “resources, leadership, promotion and advocacy for the mutual development and use of a system of genealogy for researching African related ancestry.” Records available for searching include federal and state census records, death records, various library records, marriage records, slave data, photographs, surname databases. One special feature is the states and world database that allows people interested in African American genealogy to link their websites and other information to AfriGeneas. Other resources include active chat rooms and forums that connect researchers to other researchers. This site also includes consistently updated articles about current events in the African American genealogy field.

Access Genealogy: African American Genealogy
www.accessgenealogy.com/african
This page is part of a larger website called AccessGenealogy.com. The African American research resource directory displays links to various records organized by the states in which the records can be found or the states the records are about. These records tend to be records about the Southern United States and include, but are not limited to, cemetery records, slave narratives, and large slave owners databases. The website also provides links to books that focus on African American history.

The University of South Florida Africana Heritage Project
http://www.africanaheritage.com/
This website’s mission is to “rediscover precious records that document the names and lives of former slaves, freedpersons, and their descendants, and share those records on this free internet site.” Sponsored by the Africana Studies department of The University of South Florida, this site has been recognized in Family Tree Magazine’s Top 100 best undiscovered family history Web sites and in DynasTree’s Top 50 Genealogy Websites. The site describes over 15 individual genealogy resources that cater to the African American genealogy researcher. A sample of this site’s comprehensive database search includes search capabilities for probate records, WWI records, church records, WPA slave narrative records, slave manifests, plantation journals, periodicals, and family group sheets.

Cyndi’s List: African American Genealogy Sites on the Internet
www.cyndislist.com/african.htm
This page is one of many pages offered by Cyndi’s List (cyndislist.com), which has been functioning as a genealogy resource database website since 1996. The particular page offers links to searchable birth, marriage and death records, cemetery and funeral homes, military records, immigration, emigration and migration records, books, federal and state census records, other general genealogy sites related to African American genealogy research. An extensive list of other links include, but are not limited to, links to libraries, museums, archives, articles, mailing lists, chats, newsgroups, maps, and DNA projects. There is also an extensive list of photographs, postcards, yearbooks, school memorabilia, and “other ephemera of life”. Researchers should find this list of resources quite helpful and they start and continue their searches for stories of and facts about the African American past.

Genealinks: African American Genealogy
www.genealinks.com/africanamerican.htm
Sponsored by Genealinks, this page offers the beginning African American genealogy researchers a starting point for their possibly difficult research. After providing a link to African American cemeteries, the links to various online resources begin with links to genealogical societies and region specific research resources in Northern California, Missouri and Ohio. The rest of the links seem to be in no particular order but they provide valuable pop-up links to other state related sites, individual family sites, and other research sites that focus on African American genealogy. This page also offers a link to the Social Security Death Index.