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Late genealogist remembered for work uncovering Black Americans’ family histories
Montgomery, Alabama — Scanning through archives may seem like a daunting task, but if you know what you’re looking for — like genealogist Frazine Taylor did — small clues quickly reveal the story of a real person.
“I used to like detective stories,” Taylor said. “That’s what family history is. You having a little piece here and a little piece there.”
For some Black Americans, they are pieces of a picture shattered by systemic racism.
At Alabama State University, Taylor spent decades as an archivist, sifting through documents where humans are only identified by numbers, names are misspelled and racially segregated records leave holes in family trees.
Before she died in July, Taylor hoped to impart on young people the importance of knowing your family history.
“Self-worth. That’s important. You know, like I can sit here and tell you about my family all the way down to some parts of slavery. I feel proud of that,” Taylor said.
In the decades after the Civil War, Black Americans owned an estimated 16 million acres of land, but by the turn of the century, 90% of that had been lost or stolen, amounting to a near $326 billion loss in wealth, according to the American Bar Association.
Taylor said we won’t ever know the full extent of enslaved people and their involvement, “because the records are not there.” Records are missing or obscured, making lines of ownership difficult to follow.
Taylor helped Josephine Bolling McCall uncover the truth about her father’s life and death.
“In doing family history, we start with ourselves and work backwards,” Taylor said.
Elmore Bolling was lynched in 1947, when McCall was just 5 years old. He was a business man who was targeted by a white mob for his success.
“Some people were lynched for merely crossing the street in front of a White person,” McCall said. “My father was lynched because he was doing good. He had not committed a crime. They wanted to cut him down because he was making the wrong example for Blacks in the community.”
That “wrong example” was simply “achievement and helping others to achieve,” she added.
With help from Taylor, McCall wrote a book documenting her father’s story, a full story she didn’t know until she was 35 years old. Despite the tragedy, she says she and her family were never angry.
Taylor spoke to CBS News earlier this year as she was undergoing chemotherapy and had partially retired, but her passion for teaching was untouched. Up until her death, she continued to encourage the next generation to keep looking at the past, through her book and classes on how-to search the archives. At Alabama State, she worked with young librarians, by sharing her knowledge with archivists like Kashonda Murphy.
“The past is important, because it gives us insight into the future. If you don’t know where you’re from, I mean, you don’t know what’s ahead of you,” Murphy said.
It’s important work, even when it’s painful or infuriating.
“It will make you mad,” Taylor said. “It’ll make you where you do not want to do any more research. But who’s gonna do it and document it so that grandkid, or that kid, can be proud of their family? Not what happened to them, but because of who they were.”
Taylor died at 79 years old after a battle with cancer. By her estimates, she helped nearly 10,000 people connect with their past.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters says workers at seven Amazon facilities will begin a strike Thursday morning in an effort by the union to pressure the e-commerce giant for a labor agreement during a key shopping period.
The Teamsters say the workers, who authorized walkouts in the past few days, are joining the picket line after Amazon ignored a Dec. 15 deadline the union set for contract negotiations. Amazon says it doesn’t expect any impact on its operations during what the union calls the largest strike against the company in U.S. history.
The Teamsters say they represent nearly 10,000 workers at 10 Amazon facilities, a small portion of the 1.5 million people Amazon employs in its warehouses and corporate offices.
Amazon is ranked No. 2 on the Fortune 500 list of the nation’s largest companies.
At a warehouse in the New York City borough of Staten Island, thousands of workers who voted for the Amazon Labor Union in 2022 and have since affiliated with the Teamsters. At the other facilities, employees – including many delivery drivers – have unionized with them by demonstrating majority support but without holding government-administered elections.
The strikes happening Thursday are taking place at an Amazon warehouse in San Francisco and six delivery stations in southern California, New York City, Atlanta and the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, according to the union’s announcement. Amazon workers at the other facilities are “prepared to join” them, the union said.
“Amazon is pushing its workers closer to the picket line by failing to show them the respect they have earned,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement.
“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed. We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it,” he said.
The Seattle-based online retailer has been seeking to re-do the election that led to the union victory at the warehouse on Staten Island, which the Teamsters now represent. In the process, the company has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.
Meanwhile, Amazon says the delivery drivers, which the Teamsters have organized for more than a year, aren’t its employees. Under its business model, the drivers work for third-party businesses, called Delivery Service Partners, who drop off millions of packages to customers everyday.
“For more than a year now, the Teamsters have continued to intentionally mislead the public – claiming that they represent ‘thousands of Amazon employees and drivers’. They don’t, and this is another attempt to push a false narrative,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement. “The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union.“
The Teamsters have argued Amazon essentially controls everything the drivers do and should be classified as an employer.
Some U.S. labor regulators have sided with the union in filings made before the NLRB. In September, Amazon boosted pay for the drivers amid the growing pressure.
NEW YORK — The Teamsters union is launching a strike against Amazon at numerous locations across the country, including in Maspeth, Queens.
The Teamsters are calling it the largest strike against Amazon in United States history, and it’s set to begin at 6 a.m. Thursday. In addition to New York City, workers will be joining picket lines in Atlanta, Southern California, San Francisco and Illinois.
In a video announcement released Wednesday night, workers voiced their frustrations.
“Us being strike ready means we’re fed up, and Amazon is clearly ignoring us and we want to be heard,” one worker says in the video.
“It’s really exciting. We’re taking steps for ourselves to win better conditions, better benefits, better wages,” another worker in the video says.
The union says it represents about 10,000 Amazon employees and that Amazon ignored a deadline to come to the table and negotiate. The $2 trillion company doesn’t pay employees enough to make ends meet, the union asserts.
At the height of the holiday season, many are wondering what this means for packages currently in transit.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said, “If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed.”
Amazon says Teamsters are misleading the public
An Amazon spokesperson says the Teamsters are misleading the public and do not represent any Amazon employees, despite any claims.
“The truth is that the Teamsters have actively threatened, intimidated, and attempted to coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them, which is illegal and is the subject of multiple pending unfair labor practice charges against the union,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
An Amazon representative says the company doesn’t expect operations to be impacted.
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