Another conference is in the rear view mirror. We were able to take a group photo of some of the speakers, panelists and participants who made this year's event so successful. Thanks to everyone for helping to make this the BEST conference ever!

The 11th Annual Black Belt African American Genealogy Conference and Family History Fair will be held on Saturday, February 18, 2017 at the Selma-Dallas County Public Library in Historic Selma, Alabama. FREE and open to the public!

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Keynote Speaker
Linda Kenney Miller

Biography

Linda Kenney Miller was born in Washington, DC and raised in Tuskegee, Alabama. She is a graduate of Fisk University with a B.A. in English. She taught English and Reading in the District of Columbia Public School System, while taking graduate courses at Howard University, where she published Realism in Black Poetry as part of a curriculum guide for public school teachers. In 1975, she entered the health care field, working as a medical administrator for her father, Howard Washington Kenney, M.D., and remained in the field for over thirty years. She also started a medical management consulting business, H.W.K. Associates, which served numerous physicians in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area for many years.

Linda was inspired to begin writing Beacon on the Hill, a book about her grandfather, John Andrew Kenney, M.D., after inheriting his medical papers and journals dating back to 1905. Discovering her amazing family history for the first time in John Kenney’s cardboard boxes, she was inspired to give up her medical management career and become an advocate for telling not only his story but those of many of our other African American unsung heroes. Linda feels that studying our history and understanding the struggles of our ancestors, we are offered a blueprint upon which to mold our strategies for longevity of the race going forward.

Beacon on the Hill, garnered four national book awards. Linda was the first African American female to win the prestigious USA Book News Award for Best African American/Historical Fiction in separate categories two years in a row, 2008 and 2009. Beacon on The Hill also won an Indie Excellence Award and a coveted Benjamin Franklin Award from the Independent Book Publishers Association. Linda was also a Georgia Author of the Year Finalist.

Beacon on the Hill is being optioned for a limited television series by a well- known producer and Linda is busy working on the screenplay. Look for it in the near future.