WHEN ELECTRA PRICE is presented with an award of appreciation from the Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of Salt City for her nationally acclaimed genealogical research methods Saturday, March 25 at Oakland's Temple Hill, it will signal a major change for African-Americans seeking to find their roots and reunite slave families. Price, a noted genealogist and co-founder of the African-American Genealogical Society of Northern California, has taught blacks how to use the Temple Hill Library, led research trips to Salt Lake City and later joined with Malcolm Warner, president of the California Oakland Mission to help organize the Annual "Finding Your Roots" conferences. After two years of work, Price, who is black and Warner, who is white, represent a new era of racial cooperation in searching and analyzing slave records. Warner believes that mutual roots-searches are in his genes since his Canadian family provided shelter for slave runaways through the Underground Railroad. Price and Warner helped lead a request for white families to assist blacks with family slave records and they also led the effort to duplicate the vast African-American documents in Salt Lake City here in Oakland. Marie Taylor, who is white, and an expert on African-American research in Salt Lake's Family History Library, will speak Saturday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Temple Hill, about the genealogical sources for African Americans that contains approximately 3,320 citations to help Blacks locate their ancestors. The research aids explain the strategies for three distinct periods: the present back to 1870 and pre-Civil War free people of color; transition from slavery to freedom; and people who were slaves. Taylor, while tracing the ancestors of a PBS-TV executive, discovered some Freedman's Bank records. The Freedman's Bank was organized by President Lincoln and Congress in 1865 as a financial resource for the newly freed slaves. Taylor found that these bank records and entries recorded the black depositor's parents, brothers and sisters, spouse and children. She had discovered three generations of lineage about former slaves. Taylor immediately called the extraction unit of the Family History Department in Salt Lake City. Even though they did not want to extract the records, they gave her permission to do so on her own. She was already working with the men at the Utah State Prison who were extracting the Utah cemetery records. "Providentially, this cemetery project had just ended," said Taylor. And she asked the men to help her extract the Freedmen's Bank records. Taylor told how the prisoners said they would be honored to volunteer to do the laborious, tedious work recording each of the more than one million names. Taylor said the prisoners could relate to the plight of the slaves because "they knew what it was like to be in shackles and chains." They said they wanted to help erase some of the ravages of slavery by providing valuable information to help link black families. She was a contributor to the African American Source Book (along with Tony Burroughs, noted black genealogist). And last week, she finished the Quick Guide African American Genealogical Research to assist Blacks, and whites who want to help them, with their family history research. During the "Finding Your Roots" conference, and in response to the need for family records of slave families, an announcement of a new section to house slave records will be made. The Repository for Slave Records and Resources for Slave Family Research will be housed in the Family History Library in Oakland. It will include information donated by whites, genealogical records of slave families, and vital statistic records which were not recorded for black's prior to 1870. "Some white families may have these records and other important documents such as wills, unknowingly stashed away, with other keepsakes and memorabilia in their attics and basements," said Barbara Salsbury, a white co-inventor of the "Memory Jogger" with Mid-Peninsula NAACP leader Janet Wells, a black. The Memory Jogger, which will be given out free to conference attendees, is an easy guide to make family research exciting. Along with the City Resolution to Electra Price sponsored by Councilmember Dick Spees, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, a member of the House Banking Committee, will present a Congressional Resolution and discuss the importance of Oakland's approach being adopted throughout the country. Some of the co-sponsors have asked City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and Mayor Jerry Brown to facilitate a Oakland City Library linkage to the Family History Center Library so all national public records can be accessed while researching African American family records on Temple Hill. During the conference tours of the Family History Library will be conducted for attendees as well as free lessons on how to use the Internet to find ancestry records will be offered. Darius Gray, a former broadcast journalist and now businessman in Salt Lake City, will also address the Oakland event. Gray who once interviewed and worked with the late Alex Haley also will speak on the importance of the Freedman's data. Alex Haley's brother George, currently the U.S. ambassador to Gambia, is continuing the precedent-setting work of his late brother and will be appearing in Oakland May 13 at Temple Hill to talk about the importance of families. (Coincidentally, George Haley is ambassador to the area in Africa (Gambia) where his brother, Alex, traced their family's roots). The information that Oakland requested will also be placed in every Family History Center in the country. Now the dreams of Price and Warner to help blacks climb over the wall of 1870 can be realized. | 