Join AAHGS Jean Sampson Scott Greater New York Chapter, The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, and guest speaker Danielle Romero for a program that examines how racial designations shift across historical documents and what those changes reveal about family history, community ties, and identity.
Drawing on her work as the creator of the
Finding Lola documentary and the You Tuber behind the NYTN channel, Danielle Romero explores the story behind the paper trail and why the “official record” isn’t always the whole truth. The presentation will be followed by a short conversation featuring AAHGS New York Chapter President Stacey Bell and PhD candidate Olivia Aminatta Jobe, and then an audience Q&A.
This is a free (online) program, but registration is required.
This series is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
About Danielle Romero
At sixteen, Danielle Romero discovered her great-grandmother Lola on a census record marked "mulatto"—and that single word launched a research journey spanning more than two decades. Today, she is a historian, educator, and creator of the documentary series
Finding Lola, which has attracted a community of nearly 200,000 on her YouTube channel @NYTN. She holds a Bachelor's degree in History and a Master's in Education, and her scholarship on Louisiana Creole heritage has been published in the peer-reviewed journal
La Creole.
Danielle specializes in finding and preserving family stories and placing them in the historical context that reveals how families like hers navigated a shifting American landscape. She speaks to audiences eager to move beyond names and dates, showing how a single document can unlock not just a family's past, but the history that shaped it. When she's not digging up ancestors, she's on her third cup of coffee, hoping her rose bushes survive another Nashville summer.