By Madeline Reinsel

“Your journey in genealogy is like solving a puzzle,” said Baskerville, the president of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society’s greater Richmond chapter, as she addressed the class. “So, you’re not going to find all the pieces this week. You’re not going to find all the pieces this month.”

When Baskerville asked if the students had found anything interesting, Brianna Gilbert’s hand shot up. While she already knew much of her family history, including that one of her great-grandfathers was born in 1832, she was still discovering things. Gilbert had just found out that her fourth-great-grandfather was in the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War. 

The high school students came to Virginia Commonwealth University to participate in the Gabriel Summer Institute, a weeklong program from the Department of African American Studies. The program is run by public historian and assistant professor Ana Edwards and department chair Shawn Utsey, Ph.D., who is also a professor in the Department of Psychology.

Throughout the week, the students learned about local Black history and visited historic Black sites around the city, including the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia, the Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground and the Sankofa Community Orchard. This year, the program also focused on helping students learn about their own family histories.

Public historian Carmen Foster, Ed.D., worked with two brothers, Tyrell and Jerrell Wesley, to research their ancestors. They had already discovered that their great-grandfather, William S. Thornton, was a civil rights activist and co-founder of the Richmond Crusade for Voters. The pair then combed through photos of their grandfather from the 1960s, including some where he is pictured as part of a majority-white high school football team.

“He was probably part of the first wave of students to go to a white school in Lynchburg,” said Foster, who recently spoke with VCU Magazine about her own experience desegregating Richmond schools.

The summer institute should be fun, Edwards said, but it should also introduce the students to college life. This year’s cohort met with college admissions professionals, in addition to interacting with the college students leading the program.

Edwards also hopes the participants will consider majoring in African American studies at VCU and other institutions, and that the program will amplify the resources available to the VCU community at Gabriel’s House, the Franklin Street building that is home to the VCU department.

“There are some significant critical thinking skills that you get from going through the discipline of African American studies, which people don’t always recognize are really insightful to being a resident of the United States and understanding its history,” she said. “Basically, you put yourself in another set of shoes and walk the experience through an African American lens.”

And for the high school students, the program was a chance to experience campus life, and take a deep dive into their own family histories.

“Tracing my family felt like discovering parts of myself,” Gilbert said. “I never expected to trace my roots back to the 1500s, and I can’t wait to go even further.”