Eboni Zamani looking at her family tree that she’s constructed over the years. (Photo: Rasheed Z. Ajamu)

A little rain couldn’t stop those eager to learn more about jump-starting their journeys to trace their roots and explore their family genealogy as they gathered in the meeting room on the lower level of Coleman Library.

The April 5th afternoon workshop, co-led by local filmmaker Eboni Zamani, gave participants potential first steps and showed tips & tricks on how to track — and maybe even connect — with your ancestors and long-lost kin.

Zamani went through a plethora of topics on how to start tracing your own roots, including the challenges and complexities of tracing Black ancestry (like fragmented family records, forced name changes, family separations, and more), DNA testing concerns like the current issues with 23andMe, other research strategies (including showing and presenting texts from the library), techniques for tracking and organizing, and more.

The sessions were supplemented by presenting texts directly from the library, the filmmaker’s own family tree (including her mother and her grandmothers on both sides being in-person to help fill information gaps), and walking through the tools she uses to find her family history.

Attendees also got to witness a five-minute preview of Zamani’s unfinished documentary, “A Long Way Home,” which chronicles how she found the many parts of her family history.

Alongside Zamani was Coleman librarian Molly Ward, who invited her to go over her processes as an offering to neighbors. Zamani says she was happy to bring her work to the library because “it shouldn’t be a thing where people really have to pay.”

Zamani, along with her younger brother, has been doing their family genealogy research for about six years. Her journey was sparked by the passing of her great-grandmother in 2016, which made Zamani “more curious” about stories and information she received from her closest late ancestor.

“It’s been eye-opening, actually,” the filmmaker says. “A lot of different things make sense about myself.” 

She says that while many believe we are all just “an amalgamation of our parents,” other family members are just as crucial to our genetic and characteristic makeup, whether our behaviors or mannerisms.

Aside from personal connections, Zamani emphasized the importance of using genealogy to reacquaint ourselves with our own cultures and the histories associated with them. She puts particular emphasis on the need for Black people, whose histories have been altered and erased in both systemic and circumstantial ways.

“It gives you a sense of pride,” she says.

One elder in the room, Baba Seth Leonard Yodel (69), has been tracing his lineage for quite some time. It dates as far back as a screening of Alex Haley’s “Roots” in 1978 in D.C., where he says he asked Haley for support on starting his journey. 

It was at that screening that Haley lent him the advice to visit the Library of Congress, which would start a multi-decade-long crusade, eventually leading him to Saturday’s event.

Leonard Yodel attended the event to learn about more possible tools and ways to dive deeper into his past. He’s already learned much about his Geechee roots, but he wants to know more about his Cherokee roots, dating back to his great-grandfather’s birth in 1833 in Northern Alabama. 

He echoes Zamani’s sentiments about the importance of doing family genealogy to connect deeper with yourself and your history. He says, though he’s been on and off over his journey, it’s time for him to “lock in.”

However, Zamani says being on and off is a possible defense mechanism for this kind of work. After showing part of her documentary, it was clear that it had evoked much emotion in the viewers. Even Zamani’s mother, Nikki Bagby, who has already been privy to some of this information, felt heavy.

Zamani and Bagby talked about how this work has also been a way to gain more empathy for those ahead of us. The experiences that made them who they were can sometimes be hidden from us, as the children of those folks.

Sierra Williams, a younger Germantown neighbor, was also in attendance. She, like Leonard Yodel, is inspired by Alex Haley’s timeless book and TV series, which was his own family genealogy project.

While she hasn’t officially started tracing her own history, Williams saw a promotion for the event and also thought this would be a great way to find her footing in the new project. As a history buff, she finds this kind of work to be a necessity. Williams lends sentiments to a particular cultural insistence on “how Black Americans don’t have history,” which she rejects.

She names genealogy as a way to counteract claims that Black Americans don’t have their own “culture.”

Zamani has similar feelings, saying she used to hate cultural days growing up because of the unconscious disconnect from Blackness due to mainstream messages. She says learning your history instills “a sense of pride.”

She finds some pride in knowing that the hands of her ancestors — specifically her great grandfather — helped to build the expressways (I-76 and I-95) that run through Philadelphia. 

But she also finds it in an old slave narrative about her five times great-grandparents, Nelly & George, told by their daughter, Katie. Zamani found the family narrative back in November. And while the contents of these stories hold much pain that many will never understand, the filmmaker finds power in having these.

“It’s been so wild,” she says.

Zamani says the disbelief comes, in part, because Black folks are “made so invisible so much in this country’s history and made to feel like [we] don’t come from anywhere.”

But it also makes her wonder if this is why she has a knack for storytelling, underscoring a lingering question: Do we get some traits/knacks by chance or does it actually come naturally?

Librarian Molly Ward says this work is really interesting, and as you go deeper, you begin to form lots of questions — not just about yourself, but about what is objective and subjective.

“What is history?” Ward questions, presenting the idea to the room. “Is it a story you believe? And what does it matter? And in what ways does it matter?”

Ward let all within the room know that there are tools available to library card holders for free and that the library is, in fact, a resource to support folks in doing this kind of work. On the Free Library of Philadelphia’s website, you can find a whole page dedicated to those resources, including guides and directories on how to jump-start your own journey.

Though there isn’t another session scheduled or planned, Zamani says she is open to returning and doing more. And as for her work connecting her to her roots?

“I’m gonna keep doing my work and due diligence,” she says. “Because we’re here. We’ve been here, and we deserve to be seen and to be heard. To have our stories told, remembered, and archived. All of that.”