Ancestry.com is using AI to make a searchable database for Black family trees

Ancestry.com is releasing a new collection of searchable newspaper articles published before the 1900s that contain details on formerly enslaved people in the U.S., the company announced Tuesday.

The database, which is free to access, could help Black Americans discover more information about their families’ pasts. The tool uses AI to pore through newspaper records for names of enslaved people, Axios reports.

The company drew from roughly 38,000 newspaper articles related to enslaved people in the U.S. from 1788 to 1867. They feature details on more than 183,000 formerly enslaved people, including names, ages, physical descriptions, and locations.

The announcement comes at a time when communities across the U.S. are pushing to preserve historic sites connected to slavery. It’s been difficult for many to trace back individual ancestors. Many of the pieces contain never-before seen information about enslaved individuals in communities where courthouse and community records were otherwise destroyed or lost.

“This collection is invaluable for providing descendants of enslaved individuals with insights into their ancestral histories and their forebears’ acts of resistance and resilience, despite the Emancipation Proclamation being largely ignored by enslavers, newspaper publishers, and lawmakers,” Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, assistant professor of Africana Studies at Morehouse College, said in a press release.

The company stresses that the articles within the collection contain sensitive content related to the buying and selling of enslaved people that could be distressing or traumatic for some viewers.

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