HiddenVoices: Uncovering Diverse Enslaved Perspectives

Abstract

In the last few decades, although there has been growing scholarship focused on slavery and its impact in the United States, narratives of enslaved populations continue to be largely ignored by the curriculum in U.S. school systems. At best, most lessons on slavery consist of a cursory reading of one or two narratives and short discussions on the economic and political aspects of the slave trade. While there’s been a slight shift in this curriculum due to the growing number of user-friendly online databases for exploring slavery-related data–such as detailed information on slave voyages–there are still no accessible repositories for slave narratives. This project aims to fill this gap by providing a platform in which high school students can explore the history of slavery and its role in the U.S. not from the generalized narrative they have been given so far, but instead through the voices of the enslaved themselves.