For Immediate Release
August 21, 2019
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MAAGI Receives Director’s Award at 2019 Annual Conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies

The Midwest African American Genealogy Institute was honored with a special award, at the 2019 Conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies in Washington DC. This teaching institute, known as MAAGI, received the Director’s Award in recognition of “the Teaching Institute, that allows attendees to learn, research, and gain the tools needed to become stellar genealogists and family history researcher”. The award was presented at the opening session of the 2019 conference at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington DC and was accepted by two of the track coordinators of MAAGI. MAAGI Director, Shelley Murphy stated, “This is truly and honor and a result of so many who worked to make our dream a reality. This award belongs to the entire MAAGI family.”

MAAGI began in 2013 in St. Louis, Missouri and was hosted at that time by the St. Louis African American Genealogy Society. In 2017, its fourth year, MAAGI move to the world renowned Genealogy Center, at Allen County Public Library. The three-day institute focuses on various aspects of the African American experience offering multiple tracks from exploring records that form the fundamentals of African family research, to records of the slavery era, and pre and post slavery era records. In addition MAAGI offers two tracks on DNA for African Ancestored research, one basic and a second more advanced track. And for the first time at any genealogical event, in 2019, an entire track was devoted to exploring the records of the
Freedmen of the Five Civilized Tribes-the largest African ancestored population with extensive documents connecting them to five federally recognized Native American tribes.

MAAGI’s participants enroll in 12 classes over three days, and classes are presented in workshop format with pre-assignments, readings, and class projects in addition to lectures. MAAGI has unique tracks, all with a focus on the African American family history. The eighth the year of MAAGI will occur in 2020 on July 7-9, at the Genealogy Center at ACPL in Ft. Wayne,
Indiana.