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Article: DNA may help people trace roots, Genetic database latest tool in search for African heritage
- Article from:
- Charleston Daily Mail
- Article date:
- September 9, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2003 Charleston Daily Mail. 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.
Blacks who search musty file rooms in government buildings,
churches and cemeteries for family records have often been frustrated
to discover 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 from tracing their bloodlines
to Africa.
Now, African Ancestry Inc., with its growing databank of African
DNA samples, claims it can restore some of those lost connections,
however ...