Candace Berry-Vaughn of Orangeburg, S.C., rotates each year between her husband’s family and hers. This year, about 80 people from her husband’s family were planning to gather in West Palm Beach,
Now she is thinking back wistfully on reunions from the past, like the event she organized in Charleston in 2018. Armed with ancestry data, her family learned that many members could trace their roots to the slave trade ships that docked there. She organized a scavenger hunt, a picnic, dinners featuring the state’s traditional foods and games in which the family tree was reconstructed. The weekend closed with a service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, where nine members of the congregation were killed by a racist gunman during a Bible study in 2015.
Ms. Berry-Vaughn hopes to resume the reunions, but wonders about the future.
“We are actually a little concerned about how might this change family reunions and the new norms,” she said. “Will people still come? No one is going to want to hug and kiss on your grandmother anymore.”