Black genealogical research is driven by loss and reconnection, not curiosity

Evidence

Of all the people I had reached out to, from world-renowned historians to genealogists—no one offered the kind of insight or information that Rose had. She still lived in Columbia, where her family had stayed after the abolition of slavery on November 13, 1865, and she was also bitten by that same genealogical bug. We shared that same energy and drive to find out more about who our people are, and where we come from. For Black people doing this work, searching for our ancestors is not done out of curiosity; it grows out of a sense of enormous loss. It’s about reconnecting something that was violently detached. The process of trying to piece it back together is painful, and necessary. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 409

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s standing interest in how institutions hold stolen things — the ‘violent detachment’ of family as the harm reparations litigation seeks to address.