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Article: DNA technology offers blacks tenuous link to Africa
- Article from:
- Deseret News (Salt Lake City)
- Article date:
- September 7, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2003 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Thirty years after Alex Haley's "Roots" launched
a genealogical renaissance, black Americans are exploiting the latest
genetic research to make once-impossible connections to their
ancestral homelands.
African-Americans who have been searching musty file rooms in
government buildings, churches and cemeteries for family records have
often been frustrated to discover that their ancestral trails ended
on this side of the Atlantic. Slave owners often changed the names of
their captives, and poor record-keeping has prevented most searchers
from tracing their bloodlines to Africa.
Now, African Ancestry Inc., with its growing databank of African