Pam. White people for the most of it has kept up with their ancestors from the git go. From my ancestors in Salam, Alabama, both paternal and maternal were born in 1794 and 1797 They were in Salem , Alabama by the 1830s. On this set of ancestors alone we have letters, deeds, oral stories, death certs., marriages lisc. Church memberships, Tax list. Most of us thru our ancestors have been clinging to Genealogy for two hundred years each generation after the other saw that our heritage was passed down. This has been a blessing for us. However it wasn't this way for the black people. . You are just now starting on the ground floor and it is up to you and your children and future generations to write down and pass on information just like our white ancestors did for us. It make take you a hundred years to get where we are to day. But, it starts with you filling in all the blank pages. Just a suggestion and not to sound like a racist,but maybe it would help if you started your own black genelogy if you haven't already and all join together in seeing the the truth as you see it and no one can change it then you wouldn't have your feelings hurt. Maybe genealogy is something we will walk together hand in hand and the enter our herritage as we lived it. This is what you said, I (you) was grief stricken to see the under-representation of Afro Americans. You had only seen two Afro Americans in the book. You didn't check to see just how many other Afro American wrote their family History in. You said, My Gr Gr Gr Grandmother's birth date was shown as 1870 when it was 1815. (Iknow because of several documents I have, including the 1870 Census in Russell County, Ala. where she was the cook on the Sterling Boykin plantation.) My Grandmother's father, according to her death certificate was J. C. Drake of Drake Cove Alabama. I can only assume that Mr. Drake was white that they instead chose to printJ. C. Duke.(This was a racist remark) You might not have meant it to sound racist, but it did to me. Maybe that's how some white people come across when they are call racist. I didn't find a Drake , Alabama,but I did find a Drake Cove where J. C. Drake lived and there was a story of the Johnson's Gang which I sent you. Mr. J. C Drake had three sons who rode with the Johnson Gang. They were hunted by the Union Army. I sent you all the information I found on the Drakes. Something must have happen because the last information was blocked from your email address. I thought you would be interested in the Drake's family because you say one of your ancestors was a mullato child of his and his family history would be yours on the white half. I was trying to give you the information and how to find it so the next time you write for a book you could send in the information in on your black and white blood. I wish you well in the next hundred years.