For most who trace an African American line, there is a wall, and it stands at 1870 — the first federal census to record our people by name, and for many, the last door still open. Before it, the enslaved were counted as property, not persons, entered as figures on a slaveholder's schedule. In this sitting I show you how to approach that wall without breaking yourself against it: the Freedmen's Bureau and the Freedman's Bank, cohabitation and voter rolls, and the patient work of naming the last enslaver, so the records they kept might speak. The wall is real. It is not always the end.

Resources to begin your search:

• FamilySearch (free) — familysearch.org — U.S. census records, including 1870, plus much of the Freedmen's Bureau collectio ...