Sitting in class, a lot of teachers would use family trees as a Segway into many lessons in the curriculum. Finding out their heritage and where they’re family comes was a big part of this. Some students dated their family history to places such as Germany, Ireland, England and many more. Knowing exactly when and how their ancestors got here was a luxury not many have.

“People can be misguided in finding an authentic way to explore and assert their heritage, and misinformation is often the largest problem. Some of the major issues are treating Africa as if it is monolithic.” Cierra Lockett writes in an article for Huffington Post.

An abundance of African Americans have lost their heritage due to the slave trade only knowing that their ancestors came on a boat from Africa.

“I honestly don’t know exactly where I came from, my grandma says a little bit of everywhere,” Kayla Murray (12) said.

In the outcome of slavery, most African American brought by the slave trade have been stripped of their family history having no idea what country in Africa their family line originated from or what tribe they were a part of.

“It’s always a little hard to find out about black history because we don’t know our full story and background. We just know the basics about slaves, and that is that. We don’t know what happened before because it was all hidden by the slave masters,” Wysingle (12) said.

This loss of knowing where they come from creates a loss of identity in some cases. Trying to search how and where their history comes from can be painful in some cases because of the lack of information they will come across. Promdomanliy since slave masters didn’t feel the need to keep of basic information on slaves.

“This is definitely painful in some areas because we want to know who we really are instead of just being labeled black,” Wysingle (12) said.

At the end of the day, Africans can only try to connect where they feel lost.

“It’s important for African Americans to connect and try to find their lost culture because it’s our roots. It’s where we originally came from and we should embrace it,” Murray (12) said.