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One of the nation’s oldest and largest genealogical societies, founded to help Americans trace their family ancestries, apologized Thursday for its history of racism, which includes a founder who was a eugenicist, and early resistance to integration.
“In order to be credible, we have to be transparent, and we have to fully discover what our past was, as so many organizations are doing right now,” said Kathryn Doyle, president of the National Genealogical Society, based in Falls Church, Va.
The society’s effort began in 2017 after complaints about the lack of diversity among the expert presenters at the society’s annual conferences. It gained momentum, she said, after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020 sparked a national conversation on race.
While the society members used their digging prowess to scour the organization’s archives, “we haven’t looked at everything yet,” Doyle said. “There may be more.”
The apology, which was made public at the organization’s conference in Richmond, comes five months after the American Society of Human Geneticists issued a similar apology and announced steps...