I Have No Plans To

Ever Since I Watched 'roots,' I've Dreamed Of Tracing My African Ancestry And Helping Other People Do The Same.

My Father, If Anything, First And Last, Was A Man Of Words. He Loved Stories; He Didn't Live For Stories, Exactly, But I Think He Lived Through Stories. I Think, Like Many Writers, He Loved Stories About Things He Had Experienced As Much As, If Not More Than, He Loved The Experiences Themselves.

You Have A Diasporic Black World, And The Only Way To Put It Back Together Again Is Symbolic. It's Like Humpty Dumpty. Whoever Could Edit The 'encyclopedia Africana' Would Provide Symbolic Order To The Fragments Created Over The Past 500 Years. That Is A Major Contribution.

I Got A Letter From This Lady Of Russian And Jewish Descent. She Asked Me If I Was A Racist Because I Didn't Do Any White People. I Was Shocked, Because My Mandate Is To Do Black Studies. It Would Have Never Occurred To Me If This Lady Hadn't Written This Letter. We Decided We Were Going Expand The Brand And Do Everybody.

What Happened In The Interim Is, Billions Of Records Have Been Digitized. Historians And Scholars Have Always Used Genealogical Records To Tell The Story Of American History. It Takes Months And Years Of Research. I Can't Even Tell You How Laborious That Is. You Have To Be Somebody Who Has A Lot Of Free Time, Like A Professor Who Can Take Tenure Or Someone With A Great Deal Of Leisure.