Tracing Black Ancestry: Colorism — What Slave Records Reveal

Colorism is often seen as a matter of personal attitudes or preferences. Yet slave records reveal a deeper story. The ways people were described in these records were shaped by the society that created them, leaving clues about how ideas of identity, status, and skin tone developed over time.

Drawing on his own work, including his father’s journey from Jamaica to Britain, this session looks at what slavery-era records show about how people were described and understood—and how these patterns continued after emancipation.