Freedmen's Bureau | Alex Boyé - Learn More About the African American Expericence

Alex Boyé emphasizes the importance of using historical genealogy records to learn more about the African-American experience. Explore African-American history further with the Freedmen’s Bureau records and grow your family tree.
Transcript:
"I’m from London, England, That’s where I was born and raised. My family is from Nigeria, West Africa. I have more of the-as opposed to the African American experience, I have more of the Anglo African experience, I guess you could say, and so I am coming from another angle, but it still ends up meeting at the same place. Because no matter where you’re from, you know, being Black, you know, the history, it comes through your life at some point and you need to know about it.
When I went back to Africa, and I walked the streets and there were certain mannerisms that the men had, and I am looking and I’m like, “That’s me. They do this (gesture) and they go “ah” and they make all these noises just like I do.” And I always thought I was the weird one because you don’t make those type of noises in England growing up (laugh). You know, you don’t make those type of noises, and so it was just mind blowing and so that was the perfect time when that it was like, when you know where you’re from, where you came from, it makes you accept who you are more because sometimes it’s different today. It makes you accept who you are even though things have changed and you can still blend with society and be, you know, be an upstanding person, citizen, but still maintain your culture and who you are.
You can be inspired when you get this information-and it happens differently for different people, whether it’s movies or whether it’s films, or whether it’s poems, you know, you can discover a gift that you didn’t realize that you had. There are so many wonderful things that can come from studying this information and knowing more about it, because I know that that has happened to me. A lot of times it’s easy to see that, you know, and I’m not decrying any of struggles that we go through as Black people today, because it still exists, and racism still exists; however, I think it is really, really important to show them what racism really was in its hundred percent purity. They need to know that. They need to see it and then they can see the difference, then they can say, “Okay, all right, yes, we’re having problems today and there was some struggles but look at where we came from.” Look at what was going on, look at how they were treated, look at how we were treated because if they can see that, “Oh, you know what, there is such a thing as change and things do get better.” So then when they stand where they are right now they can look ahead and say, “Well, from where we are now, it can only get better if we all just pitch in and try to help this thing move forward”. Volunteer in any way we can to be able to, you know, say, hey, you know and I want to help with indexing, I want, you know, to help put this information up on, you know, I don’t know, microfiche, I don’t know what it is, how they do it, just any part they can play in that, I think it’s definitely a positive thing. "
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