It must be said that for many African Americans Black is all they have. The majority of us, despite recent progress in ancestry tracking, don’t know anything about the countries in Africa from which our ancestors were kidnapped. The tribal and country information was lost to time and we simply don’t know. Those who do don’t necessarily know the names and backgrounds of their ancestors either. In my family we can directly trace our history back until just after enslavement. All the rest is lost as no records were kept for a lot of the enslaved.

It’s interesting that I met white people in college who had no idea about their ancestry. I remember finding that puzzling and kind of shocking. How can they not know where they came from? So posts like this are very helpful for people who are as baffled as I was on the topic!