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"Freedom On The Move", a project you can contribute to [1]

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Date: 2023-02-04  

I’ve noted before in diaries that I have gone through old newspapers to record the deaths and burials of Black people. Most of my work has been done through newspapers in Little Rock, Arkansas, because I had access and they were easy to research. (This is something anyone can do.) But a remark in another diary earlier this week reminded me that there is other information in those newspapers that may also be important to someone. When I went back far enough, into the 1850s, I found a good number of notices of escaped slaves, either missing and looking for them or found and waiting for someone to claim them. At one time the website “Rootsweb” had a place to post these notices, but, like many genealogical sites, it’s been bought by Ancestry and folded into that format, with no good way for the public to input data.

So I went to Google. And I found Freedom On The Move. It’s a collaboration of several large universities, to record the movements of enslaved/formerly enslaved people. I just found it two days ago so I haven’t explored the whole site, but I strongly suggest you try it, whether you are looking for family history, wanting to know more history than your schoolbooks gave you, want a general flavor of the times, want to help transcribe and index, or, in my case, want to add more information with hopes that it will mean something to someone, some day.

There is a section for K-12 educators if you want lessons, in collaboration with The Hard History Project.

It’s possible you may just want to browse. Or you may want to look for information about a family. It’s difficult, with surnames in flux, but it’s been a help for many people.

Example: One man who I found and recorded was fathered by the plantation owner, John Cotton. His surname after emancipation was Johnson. I unfortunately haven’t been able to determine which enslaved woman was his mother, but it certainly wasn’t John Cotton’s wife. (I’ve argued that point with another researcher, who isn’t giving in. Yes, John Cotton was married, but to a white woman. She most definitely was not the mother of the Black enslaved man.)

If this is your area of interest or expertise, check it out.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/4/2150915/--Freedom-On-The-Move-a-project-you-can-contribute-to

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