Current Institutional Affiliation
Secretary-Treasurer, Georgetown Memory Project

Award Information

American Slavery’s Legacy across Space and Time: Small Grants Program 2021
Institutional Affiliation (at time of award):
Georgetown Memory Project
GMP-04: Transcribing 40 GU272 Oral Histories for Donation to the Library of Congress

The GU272 descendant community has preserved an immensely rich corpus of family stories and shared historical memories. These stories concern not just the lives of early GU272 descendants, but in many cases the enslaved GU272 Ancestors and the 1838 slave sale as well. From 2016- 2018, the Georgetown Memory Project recorded forty (40) museum- quality oral histories with verified GU272 Descendants. These 40 audio interviews (each lasting approximately 1.25 hours) provide broad coverage of the four Maryland “departure plantations,” the three Louisiana “destination plantations,” and the fifty original GU272 families upended by the 1838 slave sale. On February 28, 2020, the Library of Congress signed a binding agreement with the GMP accepting the “GU272 Oral History Collection of the Georgetown Memory Project” as a gift to the nation, for inclusion in the Library in perpetuity. Proposal GMP- 04 seeks $24,375 to be used for the purpose of preparing written transcripts of the GMP’s 40 GU272 oral histories. These 40 transcripts will be transferred to the Library of Congress in 2022, along with the 40 underlying audio recordings. Together, these materials will provide the narrative arc, content, and context that will give life to GU272 data- sets everywhere, and facilitate empathy and understanding at the human level.

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