Enslaved families’ written records are sparse, forcing reliance on 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

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the reader’s stated purpose: archives were designed to prevent reconstruction — the genealogist’s own testimony that records are minimal, missing, or never recorded, leaving oral tradition as the complement.
• XREF: Connects to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale and its reconstruction of obscure lives from fragmentary archives — the historian’s problem of making silenced people legible from partial records.