When History Channel remade the iconic series ROOTS, we had an idea to reconnect families — in real life.
 

To prevent the names and histories of countless enslaved peoples from vanishing, we teamed up with the Freedman's Bureau Project on Reading for ROOTS — a crowd-sourced campaign to transcribe thousands of Civil War-era documents.
 

As participants unearthed names, dates, and other valuable information from handwritten records, they were cataloged in a searchable digital database. Within three weeks, the campaign brought over 14,000 names back into the light — names that now offer 22 million African Americans the opportunity to retrace their roots.