Juneteenth: A Celebration and Exploration of African American Ancestry

by Linda McMillian

NORTH GA —A two-day Juneteenth Celebration was held this year at Glover Park in Marietta Square. The Cobb County Branch of the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, along with community volunteers, opened the event on Friday, June 17 with a concert billed as an “Evening Under the Stars”. The presentation was hosted by Community and Public Affairs Director at WSB-TV Condace Pressley and included music from R&B Jazzy Blu from Chicago.

Saturday, June 18 featured the annual Cultural Celebration. Attendees were able to experience over 100 vendor's booths including health care screenings and information, along with children's activities and entertainment. A local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints participated with a booth dedicated to family history.

A special vocal performance by Grammy Award Artist Le’Andria Johnson was also part of the festivities.

Volunteers from the Roswell Stake (diocese) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints contributed to the effort by helping with logistics for the event and featured a table specifically dedicated to assisting African Americans in researching their family genealogy. The Church is uniquely capable in this area because of their extensive genealogical archives as well as trained genealogists available to help in guiding the effort.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believes in the eternal continuity of families. Accordingly, they have a special interest in genealogy and helping all people discover their own ancestry regardless of race, nationality or religion.

More than 550 people visited the Latter-Day Saint booth this year and learned how to start the process of tracing their own family history.

For African Americans, researching family history can be an arduous experience because of slavery. Slavery resulted in many relevant records being incomplete or hard to locate. It wasn't until 1870 that the US Census included African Americans by their actual names.

In 2001, the Church released the Freedman’s Bank Records — documents that contained information regarding several generations of African Americans immediately following the U.S. Civil War on CD. The CD contains indexes which make the documents searchable.

In 2006 the Church of Jesus Christ launched an African American resource web page to assist specifically in that line of research.

See: African-American Online Genealogy Records

The Family History Library of the Church is one of the largest genealogical libraries in the world.

The library is operated by FamilySearch, a nonprofit genealogical organization owned by the Church and dedicated to connecting families across generations. The library is free of charge and open to the public and accessible online.

The public collection in Salt Lake City includes over 1.3 million rolls of microfilmed genealogical records; 190,000 microfiche; 340,000 books, serials, and other formats; and 125,500 periodicals, which are preserved in humidity, temperature, and lighting-controlled environment. It also houses the names of more than 8 billion deceased people from more than 100 countries.

Regarding the Marietta event, Church of Jesus Christ volunteer, June Casella, remarked: "As a member of the Juneteenth Planning Committee, I witnessed the unity of black and white minds coming together . On Saturday, as I helped unload the vans of the vendors, I witnessed the unity of black and white hands working together. We were all united in the common goal to create the best Juneteenth ever. It was an uplifting and exhilarating experience. I thought: "What a great model for our country!"

For more information on tracing your own genealogy: FamilySearch.org

See: Tips and resources for searching African American Family histories.

Read: An African American sociologist discovers her own ancestry.