In developing the working principles for our project and associated activities, we are mindful and critically informed of the issues involved. Sensitivity is especially essential for a slavery studies project that aims to collect, curate, and analyze vast quantities of data derived from the archives and advertisements of enslavers and slave traders, records in which Black people are routinely commodified, degraded and depersonalized. To avoid unintentionally replicating the gaze, logic, and impact of slavery’s racial capitalists, the uses and presentation of the records and source materials (primarily various sorts of newspaper advertisements for the sale of enslaved people) are guided at every stage by both frequent and sustained consultation with descendants of the Black diaspora in Liverpool, Georgia, and South Carolina; the lessons and important legacy of Slave Voyages -- the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database; as well by close attention to the methods and critical perspectives provided by Black digital practices. Always our aim is to encourage fuller, richer human histories of the lives of enslaved people beyond the traumatic moment of their capture and sale.
