Liberation Genealogy Project

We arrive
We remember
We begin again

The Liberation Genealogy Project is a living, ceremonial practice rooted in remembrance, creativity, and relationship. It is an offering devoted to Black people of African descent across generations and geographies—an invitation to reclaim lineage, tend to what was broken or obscured, and remember ourselves forward.

This work understands genealogy as more than records and research. Ancestry includes those of blood and spirit, the known and the unnamed, the living and the departed. We gather with care for the particular ruptures carried by Black lineages shaped by enslavement, displacement, and erasure, creating space to meet what arises with gentleness, honesty, and collective support.

Creativity is central to this practice. Participants engage genealogy through research, reflection, ritual, and artistic expression as a way of listening. Making becomes a language for memory, intuition, and embodied knowing. Cohort 1, the inaugural Liberation Genealogy cohort, gathered in community to explore lineage through study, conversation, and collage-making. These collages were created by participants with and without prior artistic practice that held personal and ancestral stories shaped through the collective process and were later shared publicly in partnership with The Future Is Black.

Future cohorts will continue this practice, including work with artists locally and in relationship with artists on the African continent. Liberation Genealogy remains rooted in devotion to Black life, guided by ancestors, and open to what becomes possible when we remember together.

“the more you know of your history the more liberated you are.” — Maya Angelou