The Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society or AAHGS

https://www.aahgs.org/

There are times in your life when something that has been around you for a while finally becomes so important that it cannot be ignored. During the past year as my wife and I were working at the Maryland State Archives digitizing documents for FamilySearch, the issue of our country's history of enslavement hit me squarely in the face. Day after day, I digitized property schedules from Maryland's Orphan Court files that contained lists of property being sold from the estates of Maryland residents who died during the 19th Century. I saw page after page of property lists that contained references to enslaved people. Every time I stopped to look at a list, I had a feeling of profound sadness at the lack of humanity these lists recorded. During part of the time I was digitizing these records, I listened to the audio version of the three-volume work by Shelby Foote on the narrative history of the Civil War. See the following:

Foote, Shelby, George Annand, and Jon Meacham. 2011. The Civil War: a narrative. New York: Random House.

Each of these volumes has over 1000 pages. I lived with the Civil War and the paper evidence of the enslavement of an entire race of people and was frequently overcome with emotion. One thing I know I can do is to help in some way to restore their ancestral heritage. During RootsTech 2019, I had the pleasure of meeting some of the leaders of the National and Local organizations of The  Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society. I offered to help them with some of my resources and hopefully, I will get that chance.

Now about the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society, here is part of the history of the organization from their website.

Early in 1977, a small group of historians and genealogists met informally to explore problems of mutual interest. Among the concerns discussed was the possible need for an organization that would focus largely, but not exclusively, on the family history and genealogy of minority groups in the belief that these groups had been largely overlooked over the years. No definite plans were made to form such an organization at this time, but it was agreed that those interested would give further thought to the idea, would discuss it with their colleagues, and would meet at a later date to pursue the possibility and desirability of establishing such an organization. This initial, informal meeting proved ultimately to mark the actual beginning of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (AAHGS), the broad purposes of which would be to foster and encourage historical and genealogical studies of families of all ethnic groups, with special emphasis upon Afro-Americans since the greatest deficiency was to be found in this area.

From my perception, Afro-American genealogy is just in its beginnings. The records we were digitizing at the Maryland State Archives contained an enormous amount of information about the enslaved people living at that time. I can only think that there are other records out there that are waiting to be digitized and/or made available.

There are local state chapters of the AAHGS in quite a few states. There is a state chapter here in Utah and I met the president of the Utah State Chapter, Robert Burch, at RootsTech 2019. Hopefully, something will come from our meeting. I did notice that the website linked from the National organization's page went to an unrelated website but they do have a Facebook page.