An ongoing Cornell University research project dedicated to collecting records of freedom-seeking enslaved people in the pre-Civil War era has recently received a stop-work order from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).
The project, “Freedom on the Move,” has digitized tens of thousands of advertisements from before 1865 listed by enslavers attempting to locate runaway slaves in both southern and northern states. Without concentrated efforts to digitize this collection, these records—which are primarily in paper newspapers or on microfilm—will continue to decay, putting them at risk of being lost forever.
“It puts a human face on history, it teaches us that ordinary people can resist profoundly evil systems,” said Ed Baptist, professor of history and the project’s principal investigator. “It reminds us that enslaved people were not faceless robots. They had will and courage and the power to resist slavery, and they did so. And in doing so they changed human history. Their resistance helped bring about the Civil War and the end of slavery itself.”
In 2021, the NEH awarded Dr. Baptist a matching grant for Freedom on the Move. The federal organization pledged to match $1 for every $4 raised through public crowdsourcing, up to $750,000, for a total of $3 million. According to the university, they have raised $1.5 million from other sources and $375,000 from the NEH.
Now, the project has come to an abrupt halt more than a year before its intended conclusion in 2026. As a result, a couple of staff and graduate research positions have been eliminated, as well as a sub-award granted to project collaborators at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
