Back to the Fifties?
No, thanks. The 1950 census is a snapshot of a racially divided and exclusionary America
As a family history researcher, I accumulate documents, newspaper stories, and photos in an attempt to bring light to the dark corners of my family tree. I love to take a document and use what I know of the time and place to spin a story in my head about what an ancestor’s life must have been like. This process brings me closer to an understanding of where I come from and how that history has influenced me.
The recent release of the 1950 census data has me thinking about how racist policies that deliberately excluded non-white people may have shaped my reality growing up in small-town Wisconsin in the 1970s.
Exploring family history through online research is a process of continually running into “brick walls.” I have taken every branch of my family tree as far out as I can. Eventually, for every branch, I run out of documents or hints from the websites. That is why I had been looking forward to April of 2022 for many years. The 1950 Census was released to the public on April 1st of this year, 72 years after it was taken.
Federal law prohibits the release of personal information taken on censuses for 72 years from the date of the census. This was the average lifespan in 1940 when they…
