*Growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s, Keith Lester remembers attending schools in New Jersey, where Caucasian classmates always had definitive answers to where their families were from. Lester recalls these classmates, without much thought, could rattle off the names of such countries as England, France, Italy, Romania, Russia, and countless other international locales. Yet, it was a different story for Black classmates when asked about their families’ countries of origin.
“I noticed that the Black students in class, including me, didn’t know what countries our families were from,” Lester recalls, noting that Africa is not a country. “The best that we could do was say that our families came from Georgia or Alabama or Mississippi or North Carolina or some other southern state.”
Through the years, Lester became more interested in tracing the history of his ancestors, and helping other African Americans do the same for their respective families. Today, Lester is founder, president and CEO of Serengeti Historical Associates (SHA), a Graniteville, South Carolina-based company that traces and researches the lineages of Black people in America over the span of generations and even centuries.
There are many issues that make tracing Black Americans’ history difficult, according to Lester, citing how records were kept in certain states, breeding farms established during slavery, and even oral histories of Black families passed down through the generations. Nevertheless, Lester and his company take great pride in conducting “deep dives” and “innovative and persistent research initiatives” to help African Americans gain more knowledge about their families’ histories in America, the Caribbean, and beyond.
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SHA, said Lester, is setup to conduct both Direct Line Family Tree and Detailed Family Tree Generation searches. In both cases, based on the results of such searches, SHA provides clients with a detailed written report that is inclusive of the ancestors’ names, important coordinating dates, and a scroll with the family tree, punctuated with amazing details and clarity.
The written report also includes – when possible – actual historical documents that Lester/SHA uncovers, such as copies of census records, court records, armed forces registrations, marriage certificates, birth certificates, death records, Freeman bank records, voting records, and a host of other documentation that’s not always easy to find. In many instances, SHA provides vintage photographs of ancestors/families, which in some cases are more than 100 years old.
“We employ all the tools that we have at our disposal to trace and research the history and lineage of ancestors of the African American diaspora,” says Lester. “What we find is that much of our history is not lost, but it’s misidentified, but we attempt to find the straight lines back into our history.”
To date, Lester and his company have been successful at uncovering historical information dating back to the 1700s in America.
When asked about his company’s track record of tracing African Americans’ history to Africa, Lester said, “We can go “trans-Atlantic” during certain conditions of our searches and get a pretty good idea where someone is from.”
Lester states that SHA does not ask for or required blood or saliva samples but will used them with the clients’ permission, as well as other tools that give the most accurate information about a person’s family lineage in American and/or in Africa.
For Lester, attaining “accurate information” from credible sources is paramount to what he does.
“I want to make sure that all of my information is irrefutable, and that every piece of information that I trace, research, and find, I can hang my hat on as being factual,” Lester said. “It’s extremely, extremely important to be 100 percent sure of the accuracy and the historical context of what we find.”
In addition to providing historical services to African Americans, Lester offers virtual lectures on techniques and strategies for Black people to use when tracing their ancestry. He also offers his expertise to researchers, authors and filmmakers/documentary makers, who need historical accuracy for projects rooted in the African American diaspora.
In a partnership agreement between Serengeti Historical Associates and IM Publishing, two books are set to be released later this year: “Deconstructing Race: A Critical Thinking Paradigm” by Keith Lester, and “America in Blackface, Essays and Criticisms of Black Leadership…Whatever That is” by Muhammad I. Bashir. In 2022, Lester will release Serengeti Historical Associates’ first family legacy book, titled the Lester- Dukes Chronicle: The Shadow of the Tree, which chronicles his own family’s tree and history over the last three centuries.
For anyone interested in learning more about the services offered by Keith Lester and Serengeti Historical Associates, send an email to cybro54@aol, or call 908.659.6163.
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