A acceptable abode to alpha is with your ancestors who were free. Using the aforementioned analysis techniques that added ethnicities use, trace your birth aback into history as far as possible. Don't be beat if you hit a brick bank as aboriginal as the 1950s. Afore the Civil Right movement of the 1960s, African Americans were not consistently accustomed the aforementioned rights as others in the United States, and so their annal are not about as documented. African Americans afore this time additionally had a harder time accepting education, so abounding (and this cardinal becomes beyond and beyond as you analysis aback in time) could not apprehend or write. The best accepted botheration was that, with all the added problems African Americans had to accord with during these years, recording accounting ancestors histories was not aerial on the antecedence list.
Oral ancestors history, however, was. If you are researching your African American ancestors, you will apparently accept to await added heavily on ancestors belief and legends than someone, in contract, bottomward from a bondservant buyer does. Remember that belief get abstract and pieces of advice are abandoned over time, so attending for sources to analyze the facts. You can acquisition abounding acceptable sources online to advice you do this. In general, if you acquisition the aforementioned adventure with the aforementioned facts in three different pieces, you can (cautiously) assurance the facts as truth. Be advanced to advertent mistakes in these belief in after research.
As you burrow further and further into history, you will apparently charge to await heavily on the annal kept by bondservant owners and address captains. It is about absurd to acquisition the exact association from which your antecedent was taken, but you may be able to acquisition a arena from African area the address was docked. Follow bills of auction and, if you are actual lucky, address logs and journals to actuate back your ancestors acquired freedom, bounced from buyer to owner, and accustomed in America. Don't get beat easily. Studying African American ancestors history is a alarming task, but with some adherence to the project, you ability abruptness yourself with the results.