• Freedom on the Move: A Crowdsourced, Comprehensive Database of North American Runaway Slave Advertisements

    Project Director(s):
    Edward E. Baptist, William C. Block
    Author(s):
    Edward E. Baptist, William C. Block
    Date:
    2016
    Group(s):
    Data Rescue
    Subject(s):
    African Americans, History, United States
    Item Type:
    White paper
    Institution:
    Cornell University
    Tag(s):
    NEH White papers, Digital Humanities Start-Up Grants, NEH Digital Humanities, African American history, American history
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M65H17
    Abstract:
    'Freedom on the Move' (FOTM) creates a digital resource from an estimated 100,000 runaway slave advertisements from pre-1865 U.S. newspapers. Placed by enslavers when enslaved people attempted to escape, these ads included extensive information about fugitives. They comprise the richest source of information about enslaved individuals in the United States, yet no comprehensive collection of them exists. FOTM will collect these ads and use crowdsourcing to parse their data into a database, enabling sophisticated new analyses of the history of U.S. slavery. A crowdsourcing interface will provide a site for public engagement with an enduring national trauma, supporting lessons for K-12, university, and museum education. The database will be freely available for browsing and exportable for research. NEH start-up funding will enable us to build tools for incorporating large-scale data from contributors, creating a prototype for future expansions of this and similar digital resources.
    Notes:
    The further design and development of a database of runaway slave advertisements from pre-1865 US newspapers drawing from several historical collections. The project would also experiment with crowdsourcing approaches to enrich the database records.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial
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