A review by momwrex
Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery by Heather Andrea Williams

5.0

An extremely well written book on the separation of families by white slave owners who treated African Americans as property. Williams explores the newspaper ads of former enslaved people searching for family members they had been separated from while the ownership of humans was legal. She discusses and disproves the myth that African Americans were detached and unemotional and unaffected by separations. (Why was this charge not aimed at the OWNERS who were uncaring and unfeeling and evil in owning people, and separating families??) The author provides of evidence and examines the emotional impact of these separations. The primary sources that she uses in writing the book demonstrate the obvious grief and longing of the family members.

The book also explains the efforts the freed people spent on searching for family members, and how the government filed to support many of the searchers. This is a very important book to deepen understanding of a central part of American history, and the impact it had on families of color, and on our country as a whole.