Ever since an at-home DNA test revealed a Nigerian ancestry, life-long Evanston resident Tina Penick has reflected on what might have been.
“What if we lived in Nigeria? What would that look like?” Penick mused. “What would our experiences be?”
A pause, and then one more question.
“What would my name have been?”
For African Americans, the transatlantic slave trade severed connections to country, culture, language and family—seemingly forever.
Today, a state initiative called the Illinois Family Roots Pilot Program aims to help African Americans recover their ancestral histories by introducing them to DNA relatives across the ocean.
This state-funded project, created through a bill sponsored by Rep. Carol Ammons of Urbana and budgeted at $500,000, provides free DNA tests and genomic analysis through The African Kinship Reunion (TAKiR) research project, led by principal investigator and researcher LaKisha David at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
All Illinois residents are eligible to participate, David said.
Through genetic analysis and genealogical research — called genetic genealogy —TaKiR identifies and explores familial connections lost due to a history of human trafficking and enslavement. The aim of this project is to give descendants of enslaved people “the opportunity to trace their roots back to their ancestral homelands, to reconnect with their ancestral heritage,” according to the language of the Family Roots state bill.
Until recently, African Americans researching their genealogy could typically only trace back to the time their ancestors arrived in this country, because enslaved people rarely had surnames, and written records, if they existed at all before the 1870 census, were often poorly maintained and lost over time, according to the National Archives and other sources.
In the Illinois project, a total of 1,600 DNA kits will eventually be distributed around the state, David said.
The city of Evanston, through its Reparations Committee, is one community that is partnering with Family Roots to provide residents with DNA kits to begin learning about their ancestry. The first of 250 kits were distributed during the city’s annual Juneteenth celebration, and additional kits were provided during the committee’s July meeting to any interested resident.
Another DNA kit distribution will take place Thursday, Aug. 7 from 9 to 10:30 a.m. at Evanston’s City Hall, 909 Davis Street, Evanston.
“My hope is that Evanston residents that take this test and receive their results feel more grounded and rooted in who they are,” said Robin Rue Simmons, chairwoman of the Evanston Reparations Committee and founder and executive director of FirstRepair, a nonprofit reparations support organization. “I hope they gain more clarity in their demands and in their case for racial justice and healing, and that they are able to celebrate a culture that has been stripped away. It’s very important we know our history.”
In 2019, Evanston was the first city in the United States to launch a reparations program for Black residents in response to past practices of housing discrimination within the city.
But reparations programs go beyond financial repair, Simmons noted. They are about reconnecting with a lineage that was lost—and this is where the Family Roots project comes in, she said.
“My vision for this program is that it strengthens the Black community and it increases our leadership, our vision, our pride, and our ability to reach our full potential and be fully repaired,” Simmons said. “This program gives us an assist in repairing ourselves—at least by giving us access to understanding our lineage. From there, we can explore, self-educate, embrace and uplift our culture.”
David explained that identifying participants’ relatives in Africa—and within the United States, too— leads to the building of family trees, restoring a family line that had been lost. By speaking with living relatives in Africa, Black Americans can gain a better understanding of the region from which their ancestors came and ask about family histories and any stories that have been passed down through the generations, David said.
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Relatives are identified from a DNA database of individuals from Africa and the United States.
“I’m hoping to give people a more cohesive family narrative,” David explained. “There’s something in knowing about yourself that triggers psychological well-being and contributes to your sense of self.”
Finding familial roots across the Atlantic can also restore cultural connections. This was true for Simmons, who participated in DNA testing several years ago and learned she shared genetic markers with the Balanta ethnic community of Guinea-Bissau. This led to her traveling to the country with a group of other Black Americans and experiencing the culture up close.
“I felt that I was being welcomed home,” Simmons said. “I felt immediately that I’d found the missing pieces to my family story and my legacy as well.”
The Family Roots Pilot Program’s focus on connecting relatives is something Simmons hopes to experience.
“It was transformative for me to go to my ancestral home and meet the village of my foremothers, but to actually meet a direct relative would be incredible,” she said.
Kimberly Holmes-Ross volunteered to have her DNA tested in order to build on discoveries her late mother made when she took a DNA test several years ago that connected her ancestry to Ghana.
A fourth-generation Evanstonian, Holmes-Ross has deep roots in the community, but she is hoping her test will reveal deeper roots in Africa. If connected to a relative, she would like to ask questions about family life, their traditions and customs, and the special events they celebrate, she said.
“We’re only able to trace our family as far back as when we were brought over from Africa, so I think having that connection to the motherland would be satisfying,” Holmes-Ross said.
“I’d really like to find out what we are rooted in,” she added.
Penick said she would like to understand more about her own Nigerian roots in order to pass this information along to her grandchildren. She would also like to see if she shares distant family in Africa with other Evanston residents, she said.
“A lot of people here in Evanston, I feel like we’re in some way connected,” she said. “It would be interesting to know how true that is!”
Simmons said she hopes the Family Roots pilot program will be expanded into a long-term program that all Illinois residents can partake in.
“This is an incredible example of reparations in hyper-local communities,” Simmons said. “Our hope is that other communities that are advancing reparations will consider this as a model and invite Dr. David’s science into their reparations programs.”
For more information, visit takir.org.