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Since January, the genealogical nonprofit American Ancestors has led the effort to identify the descendants of people enslaved by Harvard faculty, staff, and leadership — taking over the project entirely after the University laid off its internal research team.
The organization, the country’s oldest genealogical society, has been part of the research effort since the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Program was first announced in 2022. Before HSRP’s internal team was terminated, the two had collaborated to identify at least 913 enslaved individuals and 403 living descendants.
Under the original partnership, the internal team tracked down Harvard-affiliated enslavers using archival materials and then researched a few immediate descendants of those they enslaved. Then, American Ancestors determined their more complete family trees down to the present day.
After the January announcement, American Ancestors’ role expanded from constructing family trees to doing the historical research in full. Their methodology is the “same” as HSRP’s former team, American Ancestors CEO Ryan J. Woods said in a February 19 interview.
The group consults administrative, cemetery, church, and other records to trace the lineage of an enslaved ancestor. As enslaved individuals were often classified with physical property in historical records, American Ancestors also reviews records of financial transactions to trace ancestry.
“The institution of slavery was perpetuated in part by breaking apart families,” Woods said. “The notion of families being broken apart on a regular basis means you have to look sort of far and wide to make connections.”
University spokesperson Sarah E. Kennedy O’Reilly declined to comment on how much progress had been made since the work was outsourced.
American Ancestors has long had deep ties to Harvard.
University Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr., a member of the Legacy of Slavery initiative’s advisory council, History professor Vincent A. Brown, formerly on the initiative’s memorial project committee, and Harvard professor Brandon M. Terry ’05 serve on the Scholars Council of its 10 Million Names project — which aims to identify the names of all African Americans enslaved in the United States prior to emancipation.
The group also provides genealogical research for Gates’ PBS show “Finding Your Roots.” It hosted a gala on Thursday to celebrate naming a part of its Newbury Street headquarters after him.
In an interview, Vice Provost for Special Projects Sara N. Bleich declined to answer questions on why the University felt the need to lay off its internal team but said she was “really excited” about the expanded partnership with American Ancestors. Bleich said twice in one answer that it was a way to “scale the work,” echoing language from the press release announcing the partnership.
But several former HSRP employees have questioned Bleich’s claim, asserting that the internal team was capable of making the same progress.
“What does scaling with American Ancestors actually mean?” Wayne W. Tucker, a former HSRP researcher, said. “It’s kind of this vague word that nobody really presses the administration about.”
“How is the internal HSRP hindering that scale, you know? Why couldn’t it be done in tandem with existing internal HSRP researchers?” he added.
University officials have declined to clarify what Bleich and others mean when saying American Ancestors will “scale” the work. In response to a request for this article, Kennedy O’Reilly referred The Crimson to a January press release in which Gates made such a statement without expanding further.
Though American Ancestors has taken on more responsibility, the contract’s structure is largely unchanged.
As before, Harvard will continue to pay American Ancestors on an hourly basis — just for more hours. But while the first contract had a specific deliverable — that the organization would trace the genealogies of 36 enslaved individuals, according to a copy obtained by The Crimson — the new one is less explicit.
“The nature of genealogical research, whether for Harvard or an individual or publication, is such that one can’t guarantee a discovery,” Woods said.
“The deliverable in this contract is two things,” Bleich said. “Number one is, find more enslaved people, number two, identify their direct descendants.”
As part of the new partnership, Harvard committed to donating the research into its legacy of slavery to American Ancestors’ 10 Million Names project, which seeks to identify the names of every individual enslaved in the United States, in the press release announcing the collaboration.
To support the partnership, American Ancestors has hired at least two former members of the HSRP team: Gabriel Raeburn, HSRP’s former senior research fellow, and a student who will intern at American Ancestors this summer.
“My understanding is that the mandate (e.g. to find those enslaved by Harvard leaders, faculty, and staff or those enslaved on campus, and to trace their living descendants) remains the same,” Raeburn wrote in a statement.
—Staff writer Sophie Gao can be reached at sophie.gao@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @sophiegao22.
—Staff writer Alexandra M. Kluzak can be reached at alexandra.kluzak@thecrimson.com.
