Secondly, for those who use Family Tree Maker, I am interested in how useful this software is and whether or not there are things that could be fine-tuned in order to make it more valuable to African Americans.
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FTM is a basic and a fair program. It is a closed database. It makes nice charts and is available in retail stores. I keep a copy of it to import into my database. FTM does not follow the protocol; it exports data funny and some data (in past versions)could not be exported. I have to see it in FTM format to verify conversion.

Legacy Family Tree is a good program and gives nice charts. A full, basic version is free to download.

My database is The Master Genealogist/TMG. It is an open database. It allows me to create my one fields, i.e. race, slave, slave owner... It is not for beginners, though. TMG can convert files from other programs directly into TMG format; a very good thing indeed. Charting is not its strong point, so I have other programs to make things pretty.

I hope this helped.