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Foundational Black Americans: Lineage, Land and Legacy

We were here when the maps were still being drawn.
We cleared the fields, raised the towns, carried the songs.
They gave us new names every generation,
but the bloodline kept one memory:
this land is home, and it always was.
Foundational isn’t a label. It’s a root.

“Foundational Black Americans,” or FBA, is the name a lot of our people now use for the families whose lineage runs through the founding of this country: through the colonies, slavery, freedom, Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the movement. It’s not a fight with anybody else. It’s about knowing your own line, your own land and your own legacy, and being able to prove it.

In this guide

  1. What the people hold
  2. Lineage: whose line is this?
  3. Land: what we held
  4. Legacy: what we built
  5. How to document your lineage

What the people hold

What families sayStanding
Our lineage goes back to the founding of this country and before it.The Record for many families (colonial and early federal records), Oral Tradition for the rest
Our roots are in this land, not only across the ocean. Many of our families are Aboriginal people who were renamed.Community Belief, backed in many families by The Record (see Black American Indians)
What our ancestors built here is owed to their descendants.Community Belief

Lineage: whose line is this?

Foundational lineage usually means a family that was in what became the United States before emancipation in 1865, whether held in slavery, free, Native, or all three in the same family tree. Lots of us carry every one of those stories at once.

The paper calls our ancestors many names: Indian, mulatto, free colored, free issue, negro, colored, Black. The names changed. The families didn’t. Standing: The Record (see Renamed: the Census Box).

Land: what we held

  • Free people of color owned land in every Southern state before the Civil War. Standing: The Record (Carter G. Woodson, 1924–1925).
  • Freedmen of the Five Tribes received land allotments in Indian Territory. Standing: The Record (see The Freedmen Rolls).
  • Around 1910, Black farmers owned an estimated 15 million acres or more. Standing: The Record (U.S. Census of Agriculture).
  • Most of it left our hands through violence, fraud, tax sales, loan denial and heirs’ property sales. Standing: The Record (see Black Towns and Stolen Land).

Legacy: what we built

  • Towns: Mitchelville, Princeville, Eatonville, Mound Bayou, Nicodemus, Boley, Greenwood, and hundreds more.
  • Schools: the first historically Black college, now Cheyney University, opened in 1837. More than 100 HBCUs stand today.
  • Churches and lodges: the institutions that organized our communities, held our records and funded our schools.
  • Freedom days: Juneteenth marks June 19, 1865, when news of freedom reached Galveston, Texas. It became a federal holiday in 2021.
  • The sound: spirituals, the blues, jazz, gospel, soul, R&B and hip-hop. The world’s music runs on what our people made here.
  • The rights: the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments and the civil rights laws of the 1960s came from our people’s fight, and they protect everyone.

Standing: The Record.

How to document your lineage

  1. Build your tree from the living backward. Birth, marriage and death certificates for every generation you can.
  2. Walk the census back to 1870 and beyond. Note every place and every race label.
  3. Cross 1870. Use the free registers, Freedmen’s Bureau, Freedman’s Savings Bank and cohabitation records. See Tracing Melanated Ancestry Before 1870.
  4. Follow the land. Deeds, tax rolls and wills show where your family stood and for how long.
  5. Test every family story. Indian ancestry, free status, a famous relative: write it down as a lead, then look for the paper.
  6. Keep your receipts in one place. Every fact, its source, its date. Share your tree with family so it outlives you.

Go deeper: Black American Indians: The Record, the Renaming, and How to Trace Your Own · the Vault

Renamed Black. Born Aboriginal.

Questions

What does FBA mean?

FBA stands for Foundational Black Americans: families whose lineage runs through the founding of the United States, usually present before emancipation in 1865, whether enslaved, free or Native.

How do I prove foundational lineage?

Document each generation with vital records and the census back to 1870, then cross 1870 with free registers, Freedmen’s Bureau and Freedman’s Savings Bank records, land deeds and tax rolls.

Can Foundational Black Americans also be American Indian?

Yes. Many foundational families have Native ancestry, recorded under labels like Indian, mulatto, free colored or Freedmen. Test family stories against the Dawes Rolls, the Guion Miller Roll and county records.

Sources