UNC Pembroke, along with three other UNC System institutions, has been awarded a $150,000 grant to expand the Digital Library on American Slavery (DLAS), hosted by UNC Greensboro Libraries.
The American Council of Learned Societies awarded the digital extension grant. The Digital Extension Grant program supports collaborative, team-based humanities and interpretive social sciences projects that advance inclusive scholarly practices and promote a greater understanding of diverse human experiences through digital research.
The grant will allow UNCP to expand the digital infrastructure of the DLAS through local, community-engaged digital humanities research and engage new audiences.
The collaborative project includes colleagues at North Carolina Central University, East Carolina University and UNC Greensboro. UNCP’s project, led by Dr. Jaime Martinez, chair and professor of the history department, will search for and highlight examples of American Indians as both enslaved people and slaveholders. Graduate students in UNCP’s Social Studies Education programs will also build and disseminate curriculum materials, aligned to North Carolina’s new standards for secondary social studies, using DLAS resources.
The partnering principal investigators are Dr. Charles Denton Johnson, NCCU; Dr. Jarvis L. Hargrove, ECU; and Richard Cox and Dr. Claire E. Heckel, UNCG.
“It’s always been important to me that the Digital Library on American Slavery be a resource that is demonstrably beneficial and openly available to both researchers beyond UNCG and the broader community,” said Cox.
“This grant, led by Dr. Johnson, Dr. Martinez, and Dr. Hargrove, will allow DLAS itself to grow as well as provide funding for their important work at their institutions and in their local North Carolina communities.”
The Digital Library on American Slavery compiles independent collections focused upon race and slavery in the American South, made searchable through a single, simple interface. DLAS houses tens of thousands of records relating to all 15 slave states and Washington, D.C., and several northern states. DLAS contains detailed personal information about over 100,000 individuals, including enslaved people, enslavers and free people of color.