When You Discover Your Ancestor Was the Head of the KKK

Earlier in the week, a listener shared that she'd discovered an ancestor of hers was the head of the KKK in Wilmington, NC, and had participated in a massacre, where white vigilantes murdered Black residents of the city in 1898. Sharon Leslie Morgan, founder of Our Black Ancestry (a peer research community for African Americans), genealogist, writer, and multicultural marketing expert who has served as a consultant to the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society (AAHGS) and founding member of Afrigeneas, talks about how people can research their own family history, and how to process when they find out disturbing information about their relatives. Plus, she discusses the book she co-authored with a direct descendent of one of the largest slave trading families in American history called Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade (Beacon Press, 2013).