Voila! Finding Context for Your Research and Family History

Card catalog by Reeding Lessons. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

If you ever had to write a research paper in high school or college, step one was always the "literature survey" -- finding out what had been published about your topic. Remember when that meant asking the librarian to show you where in the card catalog to look, to begin that search?

Very often we skip that step now, especially when researching our own families, because we have our own personal knowledge as context. But do we really?

Why Do a Survey? 

For our Black Heritage of Franklin project, I've been working on families in Chester, Randolph County, Illinois, where many of the families seem to have been free people of color. After reading part of a paper about Brushy Fork IL, I got curious and searched for a more general article about Blacks in early Illinois. I began with a Wikipedia article about Chester and Randolph County, including where it is located, which is in the south of the state, separated from Missouri by the Mississippi River, originally bordering Kentucky. Then I found African Americans in Illinois, full of so much useful information:

[1]

In 1800 Illinois became part of the Indiana Territory, which was created from the old Northwest Territory. The territorial government enacted a “Black Code” that effectively barred slaves from gaining their freedom by permitting lengthy terms of “indentured servitude,” which bound workers to a particular person for a period of time in return for shelter and food. Indentured servitude allowed landowners to acquire cheap labor despite the prohibition of slavery in the Indiana Territory.

Perhaps one day, we'll find some evidence in Chester of the Underground Railroad? From the same article:

A complex system of routes and hiding places called the Underground Railroad helped an estimated 45,000 slaves achieve freedom. Known to have existed as early as 1786, the Underground Railroad was increasingly more active following the War of 1812. By the 1830s Illinois and other northern states had become a part of the network. Illinois had stops and hiding places in cities and towns such as Chicago, Quincy, Alton, and Chester. 

This history helped me to understand why some men and their families were willing to go mine coal in Franklin, when their families had been free in Illinois for so many years. Washington State was seen as a fresh start, without the remains of the Black Codes and accompanying racist attitudes. Their move was an early part of the Great Migration of Black folk from the Old South to the north and west.

Striking Gold in California

Inspired by this good experience, I began looking for the history of Blacks who moved to Los Angeles early last century, when my son-in-law's family moved there from Colorado. Their migration post-Civil War went from Kentucky to Atchison, Kansas, the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), then Pueblo, Colorado and finally LA. I wanted to understand the social system awaiting them and found at first an unsatisfying article, but it mentioned that a Black-owned newspaper called the LA Sentinel still publishes, so I clicked to it and tried the search box, typing Sanford Jones, and voila! one of the hits was an article called Honoring Black Firefighters in Los Angeles. I used control-f to search for Sanford in the article, and found this wonderful photo: 

Afr-Amer… – (L-to-R): Fireman Billl Cotterell, Capt. James Akers, Fireman Sanford Jones and Fireman Herb Spragin (Courtesy of AAFFM)

If this photo was taken in the 20s, as it looks to me, the Sanford Jones pictured came to Los Angeles in 1919. By 1930 he was enumerated as a "laborer; city." However, if it was staged at the African American Firefighter Museum it could be his son Sanford Jones Jr., Jason's grandfather. I've written to the Museum to see if they have more information. Isn't this amazing? 

A "literature survey" can be fantastically successful. In these two examples, the common thread of the Great Migration, that yearning for freedom and dignity becomes clear, and provides a firmer foundation for the research results.

Try it! I think you'll like the results you get. Tell us about your experience in the comments, please.

Valorie Zimmerman

1. By Illinois_Locator_Map.PNG: US Census, Ruhrfischderivative work: Fishal (talk) - Illinois_Locator_Map.PNG, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10693838