It was almost 14 years ago that I started building a personal history business based on the premise that every person (and business, group or organization, for that matter) has a story worth saving and sharing. I still fervently believe that, but most family histories are of interest to a relatively small circle of people. Generally, the more well-known you are, the greater the interest in your story.
That has been brought home to me in recent days around the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King's birth. The personal histories of two well-known African-Americans whose careers were bolstered by their examination of black heritage were explored, as was Dr. King's legacy itself. Here are summaries and links to five stories I found in the past week to be especially compelling. (With the caution that some of these are news articles that can disappear from cyberspace quickly. Apologies if you're sent to a dead link before I can remove it):
- Historian Henry Louis Gates, host of the TV series Finding Your Roots on PBS, talks about his own family history in this interview with Terry Gross at PBS station WHYY in Philadelphia.
- Forty years after the popular TV mini-series Roots first appeared on television, Katina Rankin of Memphis TV station WATN went to Roots author Alex Haley's childhood home in Henning, Tenn., to explore his own family history. This is her report.
- She's just 10 years old, but Yolanda King is well aware of her grandfather's legacy. But MLK's granddaughter is already something of a public figure, worthy of this interview by NBC's Rehema Ellis.
- When reporter Keith Oppenheim of Vermont Public Radio learned that his mother shared a birthday with Dr. King, he vowed to learn more about the man who was assassinated when young Oppenheim was just 7 years old. Here's his story.
- Writer Dani Shapiro was so shocked by what she learned from her DNA test that she wrote a memoir about it, Inheritance: A Memoir Of Genealogy, Paternity, And Love. Read more about her storyAuthor Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand -- Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- is available at Amazon.