The stories of fugitives from American slavery are told by newspaper advertisements from enslavers and jailers describing "runaways." Each ad paints a rare glimpse into the personality and life story of an enslaved person. Freedom on the Move is a crowdsourced database of these ads intended as a tool for students, teachers, researchers, genealogists, and citizen historians. The searchable collection of more than 30,000 ads can be filtered by location, date, name of fugitive, name of enslaver, and more. Some ads have full-text transcriptions. From the site's home page, click "Access the Database" then "Search" to view the ads. On the search page, under the Download tab, users can download search results in JSON or CSV format. Educators will want to check out the provided lesson plans, accessible from the home page by clicking "K-12 Educator Resources." These instructional materials were created in collaboration with the Teaching Hard History project. Freedom on the Move is a joint project by several universities and is funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Archives, and the Cornell University Institute for the Social Sciences. Keep up with them on Twitter (@fotmproject) and on Instagram (@freedomonthemove).
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