Race, Place and Civic Genealogies Symposium at ASU

This 2026 Race, Place and Civic Genealogies Symposium builds on the illuminating 2022 Washington Post series on 18th and 19th century members of Congress who had ties to enslavement. That series revealed extensive and still understudied connections between sites of enslavement and freedom and the genealogical connections between individuals of all races and diverse regions.   

Speakers and discussants include Julie Zauzmer Weil, Washington Post reporter and author of the 2022 series on slaveholding congressmen, Carole Coles Henry, Phoenix community leader and a descendant of one of the families featured in Weil’s Washington Post articles, Debra Bruno, journalist and author of A Hudson Valley Reckoning: Discovering the Forgotten History of Slaveholding in my Dutch American Family and Eleanor Mire, a genealogist whose family is intertwined with Debra Bruno’s ancestors. 

Join us for this symposium focused on the histories and contemporary issues that are intensifying our understanding of democracy and American history.