African American genealogy relies on scant paper records supplemented by oral tradition.

Evidence

“The records for enslaved African Americans prior to 1865 in the South as well as for emancipated African Americans afterward in the late 19th century can be minimal,” Childs cautioned. “Some of these items may be quite difficult to find—sometimes no longer surviving or never recorded—and we are perhaps left with some paper evidence combined with oral traditions to tell the story.” — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 387

Categorization

• XREF: Relates directly to the reader’s goal of understanding how archives were designed to obstruct genealogical reconstruction for enslaved families. — connects to: Indigenous oral records can span centuries beyond Western scientific statistics — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1615