The Privilege of Family History

Abstract

Abstract This article situates the recent phenomenon of historians writing openly about their own familial and kin networks. After a brief discussion of the evolution of family history as a scholarly field, this article foregrounds the experiences and words of a number of African Americans who engaged in a diverse range of historical, genealogical, archival, and memorial “family history” work over the last two centuries. In the context of slavery, I approach family history as a form of enslaved resistance and anti-slavery argument. In the post-emancipation era, I consider African American family history within and beyond the nascent historical profession amid the racist national backlash to Reconstruction and the early Jim Crow era. From the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance to the modern civil rights era, I explore the popularization of African American family history, the rise of the “new” social history, and the waves of men and women who entered the profession at the intersection of scholarship and social movement. In closing, I reflect upon African American family history in the post-civil rights era, from Roots to the rise of genetic genealogy, and the legacies of these transformations for the historical profession.