Cousins Dorothy Coleman and Delores Greer know their great-grandfather was the son of a white plantation owner and a black slave. (Yuli Wu photo) | ZOOM |

        Dorothy Coleman's ancestors include a white plantation owner, a black slave and a Cherokee Indian. She tells her grandchildren: You can't hate anyone. You might be related.

        “We look like the brown spectrum of the rainbow,” the Northside woman says of her extended family. “We have women who look like they're white, all the way to dark-skinned. We don't know what color our children are going to be when they come out.”

        Her story and others linking Cincinnati to the slavery era would be ideal for the archives of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, communications director Ernest Britton said.

        At 6:30 p.m. today, the center kicks off an oral history project in which Greater Cincinnatians — black and white — will be asked to share their family histories.

        Tonight's event coincides with the celebration known as Juneteenth, which commemorates the day slavery ended.

        Mr. Britton anticipates videotaping three- to five-minute segments with each volunteer. The segments won't be rehearsed or filled with scholarly citations, he said. People will simply be asked to share, in their own words, a few details about their heritage going back to slave times.

        The project is being produced in cooperation with WLWT-Channel 5 and two professors from University of Cincinnati, Keith Griffler and Kevin Burke.

        Anyone interested in participating is invited to attend tonight's program, which takes place in the Westin Hotel across from Fountain Square. While histories are being taped in an adjoining room, Freedom Center officials will present a Harriet Tubman story by professional storyteller Patricia Ellis and an update of projects for the museum, to be completed by 2004 on the Cincinnati waterfront.

        The oral histories will be aired on Channel 5 in segments called “freedom minutes” and will be included in the center's archives, Mr. Britton said. Additional segments will be taped at family festivals this summer.

        The idea was applauded by Mrs. Coleman, 60, whose genealogical research has taken her from the Cincinnati library to courthouses and living rooms in South Carolina. She and three cousins recently returned from an emotional reunion with long-lost relatives in Greenville, S.C.

        “We were so hungry to see them, we went from one house to another,” said Delores Greer, who accompanied Mrs. Coleman and two other relatives. “They're my family, and I want to know who my family is. I want to know everybody.”

        Mrs. Coleman and Ms. Greer, a 55-year-old Evanston resident, have the same grandfather on their mothers' side: John K. Smith, originally of South Carolina, who died in Cincinnati in 1942.

        Mr. Smith's mother was a full-blooded Cherokee. His father was of mixed race, the son of a white plantation owner and a black slave.

        With four women, Mr. Smith fathered 18 children, some of whom ended up in Cincinnati.

        To learn more, the women have spent hours searching for birth, death and property records, and reading old U.S. Census books on microfilm. They have many questions: What happened to their great-great-grandmother, the slave woman who had a child with a white man? How did their great-grandmother's Cherokee heritage shape the family's customs? Who in the family is still alive?

        Personal Census data becomes public 72 years after it is recorded. This means that next year, Mrs. Coleman and Ms. Greer may find their grandfather listed in the 1930 Census of Greenville, S.C.

        They can't wait. It's one more step, they say, toward completing themselves.

Tax slump stalls 'The Banks'
Driver pleads guilty in boy's death
Saks called crucial to downtown
School-funding fight back in high court
CPS joins effort to oppose funding plan
Group lobbies for Medicare reform
Juneteenth celebrated with oral history project
Museum room honors slave who learned to read
Shirey picks OMI leader
Train derailment closes Cowan Lake
Valued art work surfaces
7 arrested for OxyContin, heroin
Donations of fans, cooling units soughts
Where to donate fans, etc.
Intent disputed in murder trial
Kentucky Digest
Lebanon building rules to be tested
Local Digest
Private colleges state case
Congrats
Falcons find Daniel Boone perch
More units added for homeless vets