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ABOUT THE
SOCIETY
The Society’s founder, a retired Librarian and Field Archivist, Margaret McCall Thomas Ward, had a vision and commitment to research and preserve African American family histories for future generations. In 1979, her idea became a reality, with the formation of the Fred Hart Williams Genealogical Society in the city of Detroit. Organizing Committee members, Yvonne Parks-Catchings, De Witt S. Dykes, Jr., Karen Batchelor-Farmer Allen, Gabrielle Bradby-Greene, Norman McRae, and others, including John H.H. Ingram, lll, Edith Martin- Jackson, Marguerite Coar-Massey, Leontine Cole-Smith, and Thelma Woodley-Mitchell, supported Margaret’s efforts.
Today, the society publishes a newsletter twice a year, and sponsors educational programs and workshops, which explain research techniques most useful to persons of African American ancestry. Members are encouraged to share their experiences, exchange research finds at meetings, and to deposit their compiled family histories with the Society. The Society also collects, preserves and makes available to the public, manuscripts, documents, genealogical records and historical materials. Field trips are taken throughout the year to examine historical sites, and collections of family history records.
The Society honors the legacy of Fred Hart Williams, a pioneer in collecting
and interpreting historical materials about African Americans. Throughout his employment as a senior tax clerk for the City of Detroit, he also wrote and reported for three newspapers: The Detroit Tribune, The Michigan Chronicle, and the Detroit edition of The Pittsburgh Courier. Historians and writers all over the world are indebted to him for the materials he donated to establish the highly regarded E. Azalia Hackley Collection that honors African Americans in the performing arts, stored at the Detroit Public Library. The descendant of a family who came to Detroit on the “Underground Railroad”, Williams served his community as a journalist, author, historian and patron of the arts. Williams’ own family history papers, donated to the Burton Historical Collection in the library, form an important source of African American History.
The Society was the first African American Genealogical Society in the State of Michigan.
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