Karen Stewart-Ross

Karen Stewart-Ross is an urban educator in the metropolitan D.C. area and a contributing author in the book Slavery’s Descendants:  Shared Stories of Race and Reconciliation (Rutgers, 2019).  She has also served as an interview producer for a metropolitan D.C. radio show geared towards empowering women.

In 2015, Stewart-Ross traced part of her maternal family’s ancestral roots to Lincolnton, North Carolina and Rome, Georgia, including a place called Cathey Gap, where some of her ancestors were enslaved. Since 2015, through DNA analysis and research, she has been helping to reconnect descendants of her Rome, Georgia family after over 100 years of separation. In collaboration with Berry College in Rome, Karen is also a lead researcher for the Shelton Family Settlement at Possum Trot Project, which focuses on a thriving settlement founded in the 1870s by her maternal Rome family after enslavement. A graduate of both Howard University and Virginia Commonwealth University, Karen is inspired by stories of faith, hope, healing and determination.