Help me to Find my People : : the African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Black Studies 306.362 Wi	4-week checkout	Due 05-22-2024

Fine black boy for sale : separation and loss among enslaved children -- Let no man put asunder : separation of husbands and wives -- They may see their children again : white attitudes toward separation -- Blue glass beads tied in a rag of cotton cloth : the search for family during slavery -- Information wanted : the search for family after emancipation -- Happiness too deep for utterance : reunification of families -- Epilogue. Help me to find my people : genealogies of separation.
Utilizes narratives, letters, interviews, public records, and diaries to explore the stories of separation of former slave families and their quest for reunification.

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Hard history... but absolutely necessary submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 23, 2022, 11:05pm This book wrecked me, and I mean that in the best way possible.

We should never be done learning. Learning U.S. history… I mean REALLY learning it, taking a deep dive into the hard topics that not only didn’t get covered back when I was in school, but honestly there wouldn’t have been time to cover in this depth, HURTS. It is absolutely painful to understand how much this country is built on the oppression of other humans.

And I’ve been doing the work of (re)learning U.S. history for years.

Just prior to _Help Me Find My People_ I finished the book _The Song and the Silence _by Yvette Johnson. It may be the single best nonfiction book I engage this year. Then I read this outstanding work by Heather Andrea Williams. Between the two I am simply heartbroken all over again for this country’s history, and what it means for our present.

I almost understand white people who refuse to look, because to *see* is to have to acknowledge heartrending pain for injustice this country has done. Using primary sources to dive into the grief, loss, and anger of enslaved and freed Black Americans, and the indifference and hostility of white ones was heartbreaking. Williams looks at children torn from parents, spouses separated, extended family lost, those who remembered and those who sought to find their loved ones.

And for me, the only possible reaction to this knowledge is to move to action.