Genealogy company Ancestry recently announced that it will provide free artificial intelligence tools to help Black Americans trace their family trees.
Announced in a press release last week, Ancestry will reportedly make available nearly 38,000 newspaper articles related to 183,000 enslaved people in the United States from 1788 to 1867. Per Axios, the publications will reportedly be searchable using artificial intelligence, otherwise known as AI.
The AI implemented in the free database will reportedly be used to highlight and search through individual names- once a task considered difficult to do. Using the new tool, users will be able to filter through other databases on the website to analyze documents and connect their findings.
Along with names, details such as ages, physical descriptions and locations will be available as part of the records. Although records will be available from across the entire country, states such as Georgia, Mississippi, Virginia and Louisiana reportedly have the most information.
Ancestry will also be providing additional tools, including a panel discussion at the Nation Association of Black Journalists convention. The genealogy company will also be providing users with ways to analyze information and protect both their mental and emotional health while reviewing “distressing or traumatic” content in the documents.
“This collection is invaluable for providing descendants of enslaved individuals with insights into their ancestral histories and their forebears’ acts of resistance and resilience, despite the Emancipation Proclamation being largely ignored by enslavers, newspaper publishers, and lawmakers,” said Dr. Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at HBCU Morehouse College who was involved in contextualizing records for Ancestry. “By piecing together individual stories, researchers can construct a more detailed picture of the lived experiences of Black Americans, enriching our collective understanding of history.”
Previously, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture created a landmark program along with the Robert Frederick Smith Explore Your Family History Center to help study genealogy.
Available as free onsite and virtual sessions, the partnership also helped Black Americans trace their lineage by filtering through databases such as the Ancestry Library Edition and FamilySearch.
The sessions also helped attendees filter through the U.S. Federal Census, the Freedmen’s Bureau record and other documents.
The Explore Your Family History Center is a pivotal part of the Robert Frederick Smith Center for the Digitizations and Curation of African American History. Through technology such as digitization, the center seeks to preserve the family history of Black Americans across the U.S.
