5 Books Published by Kanika Marshall Art & Books on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

What happens when DNA test results or traditional genealogy research reveal:

• Close family members you never knew about?
• People you thought were blood family but aren’t actually related?
• Kin from different races or religions?

Kathy Marshall will offer suggestions for handling these challenging discoveries in writing and/or in family gatherings. Kathy’s new workbook, Family Harambee! How to Discuss Potentially Challenging Discoveries in Your Family Tree, provides step-by-step instructions and specialized forms you can use to handle this delicate topic.

Have you ever wanted to journey across cultures? Explore taboo conversations? Visit places that carry the mystique of adventure? Capture priceless memories? Contemplate the reconciliation of past wrongs and hurts? This book is a follow-up to The Marshall Legacy in Black and White about my paternal Marshall ancestors from the Deep South. DNA testing opened the secrets to my tangled historical past. Scores of genetic relatives uncovered family trees going back 1,000 years in Europe.

Normally, I travel by myself to research the locations where my ancestors lived. Then I write a twenty-page photo book about the genealogy trip. But my May 2021 trek to Georgia and Alabama was unlike any other. DNA Cousin Amy wanted to travel with me! What resulted were two Welcome Family to the Table events with White and Black relatives who share the Marshall surname.

Imagine feeling free to ask family members whose skin tone and thinking differ from yours questions about their lives, loves, and dreams. Breaking bread together at a meal and finding common ground can lead to a productive experience.

Oh? Your people lived in Georgia and Alabama too? Are you also interested in taking a genealogy trip to your ancestral homelands? Well, this book presents snapshots of our journey. It also includes a plethora of Lessons Learned. Sixteen steps can help you structure a similar event for your family.

Part I invites you to tour Georgia, as we trace the migration of our common Marshall ancestors. Part II explores Alabama, to illuminate the lives of my ancestors in Tuskegee after slavery expired. Part III contains several tools people can use to plan their own genealogy trip, family reunion, or Welcome to the Table affair.

Don’t you think it’s time to broaden our understanding of each other and write our communal stories? The ancestors are smiling!

Kathy Lynne Marshall was a researcher, analyst, and technical writer for 36 years for the California Highway Patrol. Her passion is writing family heritage books, having published several award-winners on Amazon and her website: www.KanikaMarshall.com. Each of her books contains a “Solving Your Mystery” chapter or appendix full of hints and tips on how to research and write your family story. Her motto is: “Say their names and write their memories. The ancestors are smiling!”

Why do we have no color, Grandma?

In 1976, at age 19, Kathy’s Marshall’s innocent question began to untangle her family’s complicated racial history. Decades later, she researches her ancestors, first stitching bits of lore, then centering everything in facts gleaned from official historical documents. Inspired by the novel, Roots, she travels to Georgia and discovers ancestors, both Black and White, slaves and slave owners. Her determination to unearth their stories is matched by what she learns: William Blount Marshall, a politician and White slave owner was a blood ancestor. Austin Marshall, a Pullman porter, puts his son through medical school. Rev. Israel Smith’s congressional testimony helped force a voter recount in Alabama in 1870, confounding the Klu Klux Klan and others who didn’t want Blacks to vote. The black genealogy legacies of her ancestors prove to Kathy that resilience knows no color.

This book includes a guide to writing your family history.

Margaret Booker, an enslaved Black woman with five children by the man who enslaved her, traveled to freedom in the midst of the American Civil War. From West Virginia to Ohio by buckboard, Margaret’s extraordinary pluck and survival skills fueled her journey and gave her children a chance to grow up in the freedom she had only begun to taste. Once settled, Margaret found family and built a business in a thriving community of free Blacks and Whites.

Accolades:

• Winner, Sons and Daughters of the U.S. Middle Passage Book Award
• Winner, International Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Book Award

Kathy Lynne Marshall, the Ancestor Biographer, is a Diversity and Inclusion Specialist on behalf of our ancestors. Her books and workshops enhance the American Historical Record by adding thoroughly researched accounts of enslaved African Americans, women, and other racial groups. Kathy has addressed the Sons and Daughters of the U.S. Middle Passage conference and consulted for West Virginia’s Beverly Heritage Center.

Grandma Daisy lied to me about her birthplace, and I had to find out why. Using DNA testing, I found Grandma Daisy’s enslaved ancestors, and even toured the plantation where they toiled. Through family interviews, newspapers, and other documents, I learned how Grandma Daisy became an entrepreneur in the 1930s, which civic organizations she led, how she got her cooking gene, articles about her rich social life, and how she disciplined kids and husbands (oh my!). Poignant is the story of her ultimate battle. Finding Daisy: From the Deep South to the Promised Land is a story of triumph, pride, hard times, good fortune, laughs, fortitude, beastly anger, leadership, love, and truth.

"You captured every aspect of Miss Daisy’s life, and her legacy lives on through your wonderful book. I could not stop reading her story and cried when her journey ended." -Bernice Alexander Bennett, Genealogist, Speaker, Author of Tracing Their Steps: A Memoir.