Research At The National Archives And Beyond!

In 2017, Kathy Kanika Marshall wrote, The Ancestors Are Smiling! which is a collection of uplifting, funny, touching and sometimes harrowing real life stories, creatively told by Kathy Marshall’s ancestors and their descendants. For example, Marshall’s great-grandmother, Ella, worked for a congressman who helped convince President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, making it possible for her second great-grandmother, Margaret, to transport her five enslaved children in a buckboard to freedom in Ohio. Spunky Great-aunt Reba describes receiving her high school diploma at 106, and being profiled in Essence Magazine and on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Pullman Porter Austin’s dream came true when his sometimes wayward son (Marshall’s father) became a doctor. Marshall’s mother, Mary, a Principal, shares her excitement when Apple Computers installed the first computer technology lab in her Sacramento school in 1983. And 93-year-old great-uncle Charles describes how he became a medical miracle