We’re in Atlanta for the third year to celebrate with our partner, the National Black Arts Festival. This year’s event is bittersweet for the African Ancestry fam as it marks the last festival for former executive director, Stephanie Hughley. Stephanie is a huge fan of and very important friend to African Ancestry. She helped put us on the map in Atlanta in 2007! We are going to miss her beauty, candor, and energy.

This year’s festival is being held at the Woodruff Arts Center and is full of unique performances, inspiring conversations, fabulous Black art, African films, and so much more. Check out the schedule of events. We’ll be having a special discount on tracing your DNA and finding your roots too so make sure you stop by our booth. And, tell a friend too!

Recently I was interviewed by Joe Johns about First Lady Michelle Obama’s roots. CNN was researching her ancestry as part of their coverage of the Obama’s trip to Ghana.

Having identified the genealogy of her paternal great great grandfather to a plantation in South Carolina, he wanted me to guess at where her enslaved ancestors may have been taken from. We don’t guess. (Maybe that’s why I didn’t make the final edit!) We use genetic technology to provide a definitive answer. We’ve done it for everyone (Oprah, Henry Gates, Judge Hatchett, Forest Whitaker, the list goes on) and we want to do it for her!

I would be honored to trace the Michelle Obama’s roots. Although her father has passed, we can determine the origin of the Robinson roots using her brother’s Y chromosome. This would bridge the gap between South Carolina and where her ancestors were before the Slave Trade. We can also tell her the origin of her maternal roots using her mtDNA.

We’ve all seen how her choices have influenced where we shop, what we wear, and even to some extent what we eat. Imagine the impact that her decision to know her roots would have on our community. Millions of Americans would have a transformative view of themselves, their pasts, and their futures. What a tremendous gift.

From time to time we get inquiries to speak with people who have taken our test and then traveled to their country of origin. Two weeks ago, a few media outlets called to see if  I’d just happen to know of any of our African Ancestry family members who would be in Ghana while the Obamas are there. Sure! Yeah, right. We have found Ghanaian results for at least 500 – 600 people. There has to be at least one needle in this haystack.

Kalimah Jackson is the needle in that haystack!

I sent emails to our 50 most recent Ghanaian cousins. Not only was she the ONE that had plans to travel to Accra but she was going to be there at the exact same time! This beautiful, artful, and outgoing woman shared her African Ancestry Experience with me in such a way that I knew it was divine intervention.

She traced her family’s maternal ancestry to Ghana in November 2008. When she shared the results with her family as a Christmas present, they were reminded of her older sister’s trip to Ghana many years ago. She called home every day during that visit to say that she was never coming back home to Detroit. The sense of belonging and place that she felt was so strong that she knew that Ghana was her home. Well her sister did come home at the end of the trip and from that day forward, Ghana was a part of her life. Kalimah brought the experience full circle when she told the family that they share genetic ancestry with the Akan in Ghana.

You can see Kalimah “at home” in Ghana on Good Morning America this Saturday morning. She is being interviewed by Ron Claiborne who is covering the Obamas’ visit. You can also check this sistah entrepreneur at her website, http://picnap.com.

Thank you Kalimah for being a part of the African Ancestry family!

Deep inside almost every cell in our body lies information that is tightly packed and highly specific. Called, deoxyribonucleic acid (or DNA), this chemical mixture is tightly coiled in 23 pairs of chromosomes which produce a unique signature in each and every one of us. We get half of our DNA (or one of those chromosome pairs) from our mother and the other half from our father which is why we resemble our parents and other relatives. This masterpiece of art and biology predates human history and provides a record of ancestral relationships useful for exploring individual, familial, and population history.

I first became interested in DNA when I was in elementary school. I remember looking around the classroom and wondering why some students looked the way they did. After meeting some of their parents I realized that they resembled their parents for much of their physical features and that they inherited something that was responsible for their shared skin color, eye shape, hair color and lips. That something was DNA.

 Growing up I also had a yearning for wanting to know more about my ancestry. In particular, my African ancestry, where and with whom in Africa do I share genetic ancestry with? I was no different from the millions of other African Americans who wanted to know this. However, I was blessed with the opportunity to learn and gather scientific tools and information useful for answering this question.

Using DNA to trace ancestry has been seen by some to be controversial, especially as it relates to African Americans and our longstanding need to re-connect with particular African communities disrupted during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. However, other communities are also eager to learn more about their Jewish, European, Asian, African, and/or Native American ancestors.

The business community has taken notice of this increased attention on genetic ancestry testing. The number of companies have increased over 10-fold since Gina Paige and I started African Ancestry in February of 2003. Our company started because of the demand that African Americans had for trying to find useful tools for uncovering their ancestry. Traditional genealogy tracing has been the gold standard for uncovering ancestry, however its utility is limited for many African Americans like myself who hit a brick-wall in the antebellum south.

Criticism of our work is part of the background of an on-going philosophical debate about the utility of lineage-based markers for tracing ancestry. The debate is fueled and promoted at times by the media which enjoys and profits from the contention science enlists. The public is often left to wonder and confusion continues to abate.

What’s the value of mtDNA and Y chromosome markers given that they represent a small fraction of an individuals overall genetic makeup and ancestry? Why determine one lineage when there are thousands that contribute to your ancestry? What value does knowing one lineage serve when it represents a fraction of your overall ancestry? Why is this so important for African Americans?

The answer is clear. Knowing just a little is better than knowing absolutely nothing.

Here I will discuss these issues and more that relate to the African American experience, so please visit often. We are all part of this shared experience, in an exciting time, and we welcome your comments.

We participate in a lot of festivals and conferences each year. They are usually a lot of fun as we get to see the faces of the roots we trace and meet new people too. Last weekend was our first time participating in The African American Heritage Festival in Baltimore this weekend.

What a pleasant surprise! We shared the Arts, Education, and History Village with a wide range of organizations from Gene-All-of-Us to the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum to the Hip Hop Institute Baltimore to Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Africana Studies. We enjoyed meeting and talking with folks from DC, Baltimore, Philly, NY, and even Seattle as well as other African American entrepreneurs. Shout out to Salaam Wiliams and Darren Brown, who recently opened a vegan and vegetarian bakery called Sweet Tooth Dessert Shop in Baltimore!

But as a music lover, I have to tell you that the best part of the weekend was the entertainment. On Friday night, Teena Marie celebrated 30 years of making music. Has it been 30 years? Portuguese Love. I’m a Sucker for Your Love. Square Biz. I Need Your Lovin. Behind the Groove…the list goes on. 30 Years!

On Saturday night, En Vogue represented for sisters in their 40’s. They don’t have 30 years worth of music but they brought it for the hits that they do have. Hold On. Whatta Man. My Lovin’. They jammed.

Then on Sunday…Miss Anita Baker turned it out! Did you know that she has eight Grammys? She and her band were spectacular.

Thanks to Visionary Marketing Group for inviting us to participate in the Festival. Anytime you can educate during the day and get your groove on at night, it’s a good day!

I’m happy to have the opportunity to share another perspective of the African Ancestry Experience with you. I hope that this new blog will serve as a way to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how we think and what we do at African Ancestry. You can come here for information about the events we participate in, testimonials from African Ancestry family members in real-time, news announcements, information from our partners, to meet the people who keep this engine running, and even to hear from Dr. Kittles about technological advances in genetics.

I have lived and breathed this African Ancestry Experience every day for the past six years. I look forward to sharing more of it with more of you through this blog. Thanks for checking in and please come back and visit from time to time!