From 1619 until the Emancipation Proclamation was carried to the last state in 1865, more than 10 million enslaved people were brought to and forced to work in the United States against their will.
As families were torn apart during the American Slave trade, many of those 10 million names were lost along the way.
Today, the loss of records poses a unique challenge for African Americans working to trace their family history.
That's where the 10 Million Names Project comes in. It's an ambitious attempt happening in Boston to track down and compile every single name into a database.
In a library in Ypsilanti, members of the Fred Hart Williams Genealogical Society (FHWGS) are working to uncover family history.
I started researching my family history and oh my goodness. It just opened up a world," Omer-Jean Winborn, the president of the FHWGS, said.
The FHWGS is the oldest organization of its kind in the City of Detroit.
Winborn is their newly-elected president, but said she's been digging into her family tree for more than two decades.
"If you can find an ancestor name and an ancestor location and what they were doing at that time and their struggles and how they survived and passed that on, it’s just rewarding," Winborn said.
While rewarding, these long-time genealogy buffs say there are unique challenges they face in the process because they are Black.
"You start gathering names and facts and you start putting the tree together and then you start going back," Shaun Thomas, the FHWGS past president, said. "Then you get back to 1870, you get your information then and you kinda run out of places to go."
They call it "The Wall." It refers to the year 1870, when it became increasingly difficult to find enslaved ancestors because up until that point, African Americans were not counted in U.S. Census data.
"We weren’t considered people. We were cattle. That’s why the records aren’t there," FHWGS VP Cheryl Garnett said.
To get around it, Garnett said she's had to rely on oral history passed down from older relatives.
"My great-grandmother wrote down the family history of how her grandfather was enslaved through a course of events, wound up marrying the wife of his former enslaver, and they got on the Underground Railroad went to Indiana. When they heard the Fugitive Slave Act was coming, they moved on to Canada," Garnett said.
While the stories are rich, it's not an option for everyone.
The 10 Million Names Project is where genealogists and historians with African American ancestors, like Kerri Greenidge, are working to compile a list of every enslaved person's name in the U.S. from 1619 to 1865, but they need your help.
"We’re hoping to clear up and break that wall so people can trace their ancestors back to the original founding of what became the United States," Greenidge said.
Greenidge said they're asking the public who have things in their attic, things in their garage, that they make think are irrelevant, that might be good for family history.
The project will likely take years, but it's expected to eventually culminate in the form of an online database.
"I wanna know who I am. I wanna know my relatives. My mom had 10 kids in her family and I know all my first cousins. I know my second cousins, so now I have a problem with these third cousins," Shirley Nichols said.
For more information on how you can share your family’s history with the 10 Million Names Project, visit their website.
