User:Bjsmothers/Afrigeneas

AfriGeneas (A-fri-GEE-nee-as) is a free genealogy website and online community for anyone researching African ancestry primarily in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. It consists of AfriGeneas.com, an email list, a Facebook page and a Facebook research group. AfriGeneas is privately-owned and run by a small staff and dedicated group of volunteers.

AfriGeneas (A-fri-GEE-nee-as) is a free genealogy website and online community for anyone researching African ancestry primarily in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. It consists of AfriGeneas.com, an email list, a Facebook page and a Facebook research group. AfriGeneas is privately-owned and run by a small staff and dedicated group of volunteers.

History
AfriGeneas evolved from a small group of “GeneaBuddies” into the largest African Ancestored genealogy mailing list and from that into the best-known African Ancestored genealogy forums and chats on the internet. It grew to fill a specific need not being met by mainstream genealogy: to assist every researcher with African ancestry to find his/her roots. In particular, AfriGeneas aimed to help researchers to climb over the “1870 brick wall” and to reconnect their family trees across the chasm created by slavery and the diaspora.

AfriGeneas began in the late 1980s on independent Bulletin Board Systems and on Special Interest Groups at Prodigy, Compuserve and America Online. By 1996, the AfriGeneas name had been coined and AfriGeneas consisted of several interconnected services housed at different locations on the internet. The backbone of AfriGeneas was the mailing list hosted by Mississippi State University which had thousands of subscribers. AfriGeneas also had a presence on AOL, in particular with the African American genealogy chats hosted by the Genealogy Forum. There was also a website and an e-newsletter.

The AfriGeneas.com domain was launched in March 1999.