This project was founded to study the history of enslaved people’s resistance in the United States through the collection of fugitive ads. To date, we have collected and processed 55,632 ads, using our multi-tiered AI program to scrape and understand ads from more than 500 early historical newspapers. We have made this information available for use by researchers, scholars, and citizen-students on our website. We are also in the process of using this information to commemorate and memorialize freedom runners with monuments to be placed across the United States.
Please check out our Tweets From Runaway Enslaved People.
Special thanks to our sources:
Escaping Bondage by Antonio T. Bly
Fugitive Slave Advertisements in The City Gazette by Thomas Brown and Leah Sims
The Freedom On The Move Project
The East Texas Digital Archives
The Virginia Geography of Slavery
Advertisements for Runaway Slaves in Virginia 1801-1820 by Daniel Meaders
Stealing a Little Freedom by Freddie L. Parker
Blacks Who Stole Themselves by Billy G. Smith and Richard Wojtowicz
Runaway Slave Advertisements Volume 1-4 by Lathan A. Windley