As director of international education and chair of the Black studies committee at Florida Memorial University (FMU), Dr. Keshia Abraham wanted to use Black History Month to create an academic experience for students of color to think about themselves within a global context.
“We wanted the students to have an opportunity to talk about their background and heritage, family, culture, and have access to that information,” explains Abraham, an English professor and dean of the school of arts and sciences at FMU.
So, with a grant from the Mellon Global Citizenship Program — an initiative that helps select HBCUs, among other institutions, to “develop, implement and expand global citizenship education activities” — Abraham began to search for genetic testing firms to help students use DNA to explore their African ancestral roots.
The Ultimate Selfie
She considered well-known commercial companies but ultimately decided on AfricanAncestry.com.
“Because of the specificity of AfricanAncestry.com, we thought that was definitely the right choice to make,” Abraham says.
She was referring to the company’s promise — using a swab of saliva to match DNA with a database of indigenous African genetic sequences — to enable customers to “trace your ancestry back to a specific present-day African country of origin, and often to specific African ethnic groups dating back more than 500 years ago.”
