Alex Trapps-Chabala is a young genealogist whose main focus is tracing the lineage of African American people.

He grew up between Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood and the Bay Area. But as preteen, his family sent him to live with with relatives in Alabama to get some discipline for an attitude problem. It was that time spent in the south that pushed Alex toward becoming a genealogist.

Alex says that while in Alabama, his grandmother taught him about his family and showed him how to dig through archives and records in order to uncover more information.

As he got more invested in genealogy, he saw gaps in how African American history is told, as well as opportunities to illuminate more Black family histories.

Alex began pulling up vital records, census records and even digitizing records of home births. With the help of others in genealogists, Alex is compiling a database he hopes will be a resource for African American families.

Now through his startup, The KinConnector, Alex is aiming to have an easy to use database that fills voids in African American histories.

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