The Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice is proud to announce the launch of the new database New Jersey Slavery Records. This website aims to document the history of slavery in our communities through digital archival sources and linked open data. This database was developed in collaboration with On These Grounds: Slavery and the University, a cross-institutional digital initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation.
The New Jersey Slavery Records project is led by Jesse Bayker, Digital Archivist at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. Our team includes Francesca Giannetti, Digital Humanities Librarian at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, and graduate assistants Lindsey Dixon, Isaac Guzmán, and Adam McNeil.
Rooted in Scarlet and Black, Volume 1
The New Jersey Slavery Records project builds on the work of Rutgers historians who took a deep dive into the historical connections between slavery and the university and wrote the book Scarlet and Black, Volume 1: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History, edited by Deborah Gray White and Marisa Fuentes. The researchers went on to trace Rutgers Black history to the present in Volumes 2 and 3. Following the publication of the Scarlet and Black books, archival materials documenting African American history at Rutgers from slavery to the twentieth century have been compiled and published in the Scarlet and Black Digital Archive, curated by digital archivist Jesse Bayker.
In the course of this research, the Scarlet and Black team learned that Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives hold a treasure trove of documents that illuminate the history of slavery in Middlesex County beyond the walls of the university. These documents describe hundreds of events in the lives of enslaved people who lived in surrounding communities. Dr. Bayker began compiling a dataset of names and events related to these archival records.
From this original dataset, Dr. Bayker began developing a digital project to create a searchable database of slavery-era records that would reach beyond Rutgers. From 2021 to 2024, Dr. Bayker worked on developing the New Jersey Slavery Records dabatase while serving as the digital archivist at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
Partnership with On These Grounds
During the formative stage of development, our partnership with On These Grounds: Slavery and the University shaped the intellectual trajectory of the New Jersey Slavery Records project. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, On These Grounds is a cross-institutional initiative to create, evaluate, and disseminate a Linked Open Data ontology focused on adequately describing the lived experiences of those enslaved individuals who labored in bondage at higher education institutions and who are represented in those institutions’ archival holdings. On These Grounds is led by Dr. Sharon Leon with core partners at Michigan State University, Georgetown University, and the University of Virginia.
Since the summer of 2021, Dr. Bayker led a team of Rutgers collaborators who engaged in an intensive year-long process of testing the alpha version of the data model created by On These Grounds. In addition to MSU, Georgetown, and UVA, we worked with testing partners at Washington and Lee University, University of Georgia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Hampden-Sydney College to apply the linked open data ontology to our archival holdings, test data creation workflows, and provide feedback on revisions to the model.
Today, as we gather with our On These Grounds partners at the fall 2022 Universities Studying Slavery Conference, we launch the New Jersey Slavery Records website, which uses the platform and data model that we tested over the past year.