For African-Americans, tracing their family line from current days to 1870 is fairly straightforward — just follow the census records.
Before that, most African-Americans come from some of the four million enslaved people in the U.S., just under 13 percent of the population at the time, according to Family Search.
By 1870, most African-Americans will appear as individual households in census records. But before that, the key dates to discover is where your ancestors were just before the civil war began in 1861 and at the end of the Civil War in 1865.
Slave schedules were kept with the 1850 and 1860 census and mostly do not include names of enslaved people, but list slaves by sex and age. There are some exceptions.
If you have an idea where your more recent ancestors lived, search for will and probate records of slave owners. Slaves were considered property and were often bequeathed to family members. Deed records may contain names of slaves, including records of buying and selling them. There are also some plantation records indexed. Local records, including tax records and vital statistics, vary but may give some leads. Military records during the Civil War may be very helpful.
Although tracing enslaved ancestors can be difficult, many people have done it successfully.
Familysearch.org has an excellent guide to researching African American roots called "Quick Guide to African American Records."
