African American Message Boards at Google
African American Chats and Forums in the Yahoo! Directory http://dir.yahoo.com/regional/countries/..._a...
Discussion Forum Online community space for the African American people.
Includes discussion forums, chat rooms, and black poetry, history,
and ...
Cocoa Lounge - African American Forum & Message Board http://www.cocoalounge.org/Your online
source for African American news, culture, and entertainment.
Discussion Forums - Black People Meet | African Americans | Destee http://destee.com/index.php%3Fforum/Black People
Meet Online Community - Black Chat - Black Poetry - Online Classes. destee.com is
an online community where Black People Meet on the Internet ...
Black Intellectual Discussion Forum | Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BIDForumBlack Intellectual
Discussion Forum. 466 likes · 38 talking about this. To discuss any subject
significant to The Black Diaspora - good or bad; and NO topic is off ...
AfriGeneas Message Boards ~ African American Genealogy http://www.afrigeneas.com/forums.shtmlThis forum
is for the discussion of African American history and the African American
experience throughout the world from ancient times to the present.
African-American Literature Discussion Forum - Thumper's Corner ... http://aalbc.com/tc/index.php%3F/forum/4...si...
Literature Discussion Forum - Thumpers Corner: Thumpers Corner is a very special
and popular area of the African American Literature Book ...
Africa Discussion Forums Discussion Lists http://www-sul.stanford.edu/africa/email.html...
Discussion Forums and Lists.... "(also called Afrocentricity, Africology,
Africana Studies, Afro-American Studies, Black Studies, and Pan-African
Studies).
Discussion Forum - Black Talk Radio Network™ http://blacktalkradionetwork.com/forumLatest Activity
- Forum Discussions | The Black Talk Radio Network™ is striving to be your #1
source of independent media geared towards the Global Black ...
Black - African American Message Boards - BlackRefer.com http://www.blackrefer.com/bulletin_board.html...
American Forums and Message Boards... Message boards, forums, community, bbs,
bulletin board, discussion forums, largest message boards.
African American websites on the Internet - Myblackinfo.com http://www.myblackinfo.com/african_american_w...
Network community for African Americans, Blacks, and Latinos. Create blogs,
forums, profiles, and more.... Comprehensive News and Discussion Online
Community covering all topics of interest to black Americans. People of color
inc.
Africana
Heritage Project
African
American Genealogy
AfriGeneas
is a site devoted to African American genealogy, to researching African
Ancestry in the Americas in particular and to genealogical research
and resources in general. It is also an African Ancestry research community
featuring the AfriGeneas mail list, the AfriGeneas message boards and daily
and weekly genealogy chats.
Mississippi
African American Griots
Excerpt: West African Griots
are historians, storytellers, traditional praise singers and musicians.
Their roles are hereditary and their surnames identify them as Griots.
For example, Toumani Diabate of Mali comes from 70 generations of Griots.
His father, Sidiki Diabate was considered the “King of the Kora” in Guinea,
Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mali and The Gambia. When he died, memorials
were held in each of these countries, attended by foreign diplomats, government
officials and musicians. The most famous Griot in each of these countries
was chosen to preside over the memorials and to celebrate the life of Sidiki
Diabate by “singing his praises” and recounting his life story.
Black roots: a
Lineage of Surprises
By Joanne Ostrow
Denver Post Staff Columnist
It's not uncommon for
black American families to have assumed for generations that they are of
African lineage with the possible exception of a long-ago Cherokee ancestor.
High cheekbones, straight hair, lighter skin - these are among the markers
typically cited to make the argument that a great-great-great-grandparent
must have been an American Indian. According to those who know, this is
a favorite parlor game of African-Americans debating their ancestry.
Turns out not everyone
is descended from African kings and Indian chiefs.
Once science gets involved,
even the proudest African-Americans may turn out to be awash in European
blood.
An eye-opening PBS series
reveals that long-honored family histories are subject to radical rewrites
when genetic research is introduced to the genealogical detective work.
Tears, intrigue and insights
flow out of "African American Lives," a four-hour miniseries to be broadcast
on two Wednesdays, this week and next (8-10 p.m. both nights on KRMA-Channel
6).
Beyond its dramatic scientific
research, the program offers a collective history of African-Americans,
reaching back generations to slavery and earlier.
Hauling the family tree
into the laboratory, Harvard's TV-friendly intellectual, Henry Louis Gates
Jr., introduces DNA analysis to the record, along with genealogy, oral
history and family lore. He's digging into his own past to demonstrate
the process. He's taking apart assumptions along with DNA samples. And
he's taking celebrities with him.
Break it to Oprah gently:
She's not really Zulu.
Tell Quincy Jones to brace
for a shock.
And imagine the unnerving
realization for Gates - the noted black studies scholar is 50 percent white.
Gates, the W.E.B. Du Bois
professor of humanities and chair of the African and African American Studies
Department at Harvard University (he's better known as "Skip"), acknowledges
that using celebrities is a blatant lure to get young viewers interested.
And why not? It requires
the same diligence to track Oprah's roots through the dusty record books
as it does anyone else's. This way, viewers get a look at the research
methods and historical twists with the additional spark of a superstar's
emotional response in close-up.
Along with probing the
limbs of his own family tree, Gates pieces together histories for Whoopi
Goldberg, Winfrey, Quincy Jones, former NASA astronaut
Mae Jemison, actor Chris
Tucker, T.D. Jakes, pastor of a megachurch in Texas, and several others.
Gates follows paper trails,
property-tax records, the Mormon genealogy collection (the Family History
Library), and uses the Internet (a site called ancestors.com) to trace
the individual family trees through as many branches as possible.
When the paper trail runs
out, he turns to science. With a few swabs from the inside of the mouth,
it's sometimes possible to pinpoint the tribe in Africa where the subject
is originally from.
In one case, the DNA testing
makes it possible to learn that a prominent African-Americans' great-great-grandparent
was - surprise! - Asian.
The research is tricky,
he notes, since African-Americans weren't treated as human beings with
first and last names until the 1870s U.S. Census.
A goal of the series -
apart from the giving PBS something to air during Black History Month -
is to encourage young inner-city kids to pursue their own genealogies.
An outreach program accompanying the broadcast is set up to teach people
to use the Internet for such research.
Aspiring ancestor hunters
should know, however, that the admixture test, which reveals what percentage
of one's DNA is African, European, American Indian or Asian, isn't cheap.
It's available on the Internet but costs roughly $300.
Gates doesn't think much
of designating a Black History Month, the coldest, shortest month at that.
For him every day is a celebration of and inquiry into black history.
He tells his students
"there are 35 million African-Americans; there are 35 million ways to be
black." This revealing and emotional series documents a few of them.
