Good News! I am thrilled to see the Carnival of African-American Genealogy {CoAAG} come into fruition and honored to serve as its first Host!:-)

On March 19th Restore My Name – Slave Records and Genealogy Research, will kick-off the first of an ongoing series of African-American themed carnivals, intended to be a gathering place for the community to share and learn about African-American genealogy.

Our first CoAAG discussion theme will deal with how records of slave ownership are handled by the genealogy researcher. Contributors will be asked to write a blog post (at their own blogs) on one or more of the following aspects:

• What responsibilities are involved on the part of the researcher when locating names of slaves in a record?
• Does it matter if the record(s) are related to your ancestral lines or not?
• As a descendant of slave owners, have you ever been pressured by family not to discuss or post about records containing slave names?
• As a descendant of slaves, have you been able to work with or even meet other researchers who are descendants of slave owners?
• Have you ever performed a Random Act of Genealogical Kindness involving slave ownership records? Or were you on the receiving end of such kindness?

Submissions will be accepted starting today through March 12th 11:59 PM EST. Once you’ve created your blog post, use the blog carnival submission form to make sure it is included in the CoAAG post on 19 February 2010.

We’re also in search of hosts for future CoAAG Carnivals so if you have interest, please give me {@OurGeorgiaRoots} and/or GeneaBloggers {@GeneaBloggers} a *tweet*!:-)

If you’re new to carnivals and needing a quick “how to” so that you can join the fun, no worries — checkout these two resources:

• Blog Carnival FAQs
• How to Submit a Post to a Carnival

We’ve all witnessed the benefit yielded from coming together as a community to openly share our varying perspectives around slavery and its impacts to both past and present culture.

Let’s commit to keeping this very relevant {and healing} dialogue going and use it as a catalyst to continue to grow and learn.

We must be the change we wish to see in the world ~ Mohandas Gandhi

Luckie.