Bringing together scholars and genealogists, the panel highlights the ways personal family narratives illuminate broader historical processes often absent from official archives. Participants will consider how genealogical research serves not only as a tool for tracing ancestry but also as a method of recovering silenced histories, reconstructing kinship networks, and understanding the social, political, and economic forces that shaped Black life in Louisiana across the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

The discussion will also address the contemporary significance of intergenerational storytelling in preserving cultural heritage and shaping collective memory within Black communities. By centering family histories alongside historical analysis, this panel demonstrates how genealogy can deepen public understanding of Black Louisiana’s complex past while fostering new pathways for scholarship, teaching, and community engagement.