Black History Month 2017: Blogs Related to the Panama Canal

Happy Black History Month! This year the Rediscovering Black History blog at the National Archives would like to highlight select posts from the past. This public blog was created to inform researchers, scholars, students, and anyone interested in records related to African-American history at the National Archives and Presidential Libraries on the vast amount of textual, electronic, photographs, and special media available for use. For the past four years, NARA employees, student interns, and independent researchers have written informative and insightful blogs on the black experience through the use of our holdings. The highlighted blog posts for the month of February will center around popular themes. Today’s theme is the Panama Canal.

West Indian Wedding Party (NAID 535444)
RG 185 West Indian Wedding Party (NAID 535444)

Blogs about the Panama Canal have been some of our most popular. These records are primarily used for genealogy and labor history, since they contain a great deal of personal information on West Indian workers. The type of information found includes birth, death, and marriage records, pay scale, and employment type. The records on the Panama Canal have also received additional attention due the 100th anniversary of the completion of the canal in 1914.

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