Best African American Genealogy Websites of 2021

Trace your African American ancestry with help from this year’s winners for best African American genealogy websites.

Websites new to our list for 2021 are indicated by an asterisk (*). Sites marked with a dollar sign ($) require a subscription or other payment to fully take advantage of their content; otherwise free sites that have some sort of premium tier or paid add-on have this noted in the write-ups.

All summaries written by David Fryxell

AfricaMap

Overlays include ethnographic surveys, Wikipedia entries, data points about the transatlantic slave trade, historical maps and heritage sites—all designed to help you learn about the African continent and the people who descend from it.

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Digital Library on American Slavery

Search collections of 35,000 slave-trade voyages, petitions about 150,000 individuals from court and legislative documents, runaway-slave advertisements, deeds and more.

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Enslaved *

This handsome new site invites users to discover and explore nearly a half-million individuals’ records and 5 million data points—with more on the way. With all that information, you can get rich details about the lives of the enslaved.

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Freedmen's Bureau Project

Search for 1.8 million individuals found in records from the Freedmen’s Bureau, created after the Civil War to assist the formerly enslaved. Compatibility with FamilySearch makes it easy to cross-check those records and start building a family tree.

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