Family reunification ads after emancipation

Following the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, emancipated African Americans searched for their lost families and placed want ads to reunify with them.

Many families were forcibly separated during slavery. Children were separated from their parents, spouses were removed from one another, and siblings were lost. The process was a traumatic one for the survivors, and both during and after the period of legal slavery, many people searched for their lost families—in some cases, unsuccessfully. Lone survivors placed ads in newspapers across the United States in search of their families, many of which were placed during the nascency of the black press. These "Information Wanted" and "Lost Friends" sections were common, and the Last Seen project, sponsored by Villanova University and Philadelphia's Methodist Episcopal Church, has been digitizing them since 2016.