1.5 Million Slavery Era Documents Will Be Digitized, Helping African Americans to Learn About Their Lost Ancestors

The Freedmen’s Bureau Project — a new ini­tia­tive spear­head­ed by the Smith­son­ian, the Nation­al Archives, the Afro-Amer­i­can His­tor­i­cal and Genealog­i­cal Soci­ety, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-Day Saints — will make avail­able online 1.5 mil­lion his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments, final­ly allow­ing descen­dants of for­mer African-Amer­i­can slaves to learn more about their fam­i­ly roots. Near the end of the US Civ­il War, The Freedmen’s Bureau was cre­at­ed to help new­ly-freed slaves find their foot­ing in post­bel­lum Amer­i­ca.

The Bureau “opened schools to edu­cate the illit­er­ate, man­aged hos­pi­tals, rationed food and cloth­ing for the des­ti­tute, and even sol­em­nized mar­riages.” And, along the way, the Bureau gath­ered hand­writ­ten records on rough­ly 4 mil­lion African Amer­i­cans. Now, those doc­u­ments are being dig­i­tized with the help of vol­un­teers, and, by the end of 2016, they will be made avail­able in a search­able data­base at discoverfreedmen.org.

Accord­ing to Hol­lis Gen­try, a Smith­son­ian geneal­o­gist, this archive “will give African Amer­i­cans the abil­i­ty to explore some of the ear­li­est records detail­ing peo­ple who were for­mer­ly enslaved,” final­ly giv­ing us a sense “of their voice, their dreams.”

You can learn more about the project by watch­ing the video below, and you can vol­un­teer your own ser­vices here.

via The Guardian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Visu­al­iz­ing Slav­ery: The Map Abra­ham Lin­coln Spent Hours Study­ing Dur­ing the Civ­il War

The Civ­il War and Recon­struc­tion: A Free Course

Twelve Years a Slave: Free eBook and Audio Book of the Mem­oir Behind the Film (1853)

“Ask a Slave” by Azie Dungey Sets the His­tor­i­cal Record Straight in a New Web Series

Free Online His­to­ry Cours­es