It's Black History Month! Some great resources are found on NARA's Ancestry.com, where all month you have free access to its African-American portals.
So a BIG part of Black History Month is my family and our genealogy. The photo at the left are my late grandmothers, Evelyn "Granny" Elizabeth Shelton Carmichael, and Cora "Mom" Brown Ross Ross.
Interestingly my maternal grandmother, Granny Evelyn, was born in 1917 in Waco, Texas, to sharecroppers Annie Johnson and Sherman Shelton, at 22 Canal Street, near the Brazzos River. Always made high marks in school, Granny was selected to be a school teacher, but had to drop out of school in the 6th grade in order to work when her father died. But Granny was my best teacher, who was a lifelong learner, taking my college books and reading them to "enlighten" herself. Her grandmother, Ann Rowell, was a free African, and one of pioneer photographer W.D. Jackson's many frontier women subjects.
ANN ROWELL, My Great-great grandmother (below)
Grandma Ann traveled from the South to the West (California) along with her sisters. They were educated, wealthy and proper ladies, Granny used to say, and that was all.
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