Digitized Funeral Programs Document Black History

Funeral programs are more than brochures passed around during a funeral service. They are a snapshot of the deceased’s life, and for several Black families, also serve as a genealogical piece of ancestry and heritage.

A new digitized archive of African American funeral programs in Georgia traces programs from Atlanta, Augusta, Henry County and Thomas County. The programs contain clues that help reveal who a person was and how they lived.

The archive is available through the Digital Library of Georgia and Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History.

Jeanette Turner has been tracing her family’s roots for years. Her family tree leads Henry County, around 20 miles south of Atlanta. She said she found her great-great-grandfather who was born in 1832 and lived in the county. But most of his history— and the rest of her family’s—is still unknown to her.

“I don't know whether he was a slave or free,” Turner said. “I'm at a brick wall now. That's where I am now, trying to find that out.”

Caption

Doris Walker is among several contributors to the digitized archive of funeral programs. She’s been able to track her grandmother and other extended family members.

Credit: Doris Walker

Doris Walker is among several contributors to the digitized archive of funeral programs. Through genealogical records like funeral programs, Walker was able to track her grandmother and other extended family members.

Walker discovered more than just the familial connections. Through reading her maternal aunt’s funeral program, Walker learned her aunt loved to bowl. It was unexpected fact Walker says better connected her to deceased family.

“Funeral documents like those, the funeral programs, in the African American community, especially, provide a wealth of information,” she said.

That wealth of information is crucial and unique to the recording of African American history, which the Atlantic slave trade disturbed by displacing millions of captive Africans across North and South America. Historians see documents like funeral programs as a way to recover a glim of a past lost to generational trauma.

But can they be considered artifacts?

Tamika Strong from the African-American Genealogical Historical Society said some people don’t think of it that way.

“For some, they just look at it as a piece of paper,” she said.

Caption

The inside pages of Mr. J.C. Moore's funeral program.

Credit: Doris Walker

But Strong is among a group of local librarians and genealogists that said Black funeral programs should be considered artifacts. Angela Stanley, from the Georgia Public Library Service, said it serves as a vital document connecting present to the past.

“That's something we get to talk to our patrons about all the time,” she said.

The archive of funeral programs can be accessed online through the Digital Library of Georgia.