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A New Avenue of Research: Analyzing the Usage of the Terms "Slave" and "Enslaved"

 Hours: 77.5

Last week, I continued to focus my research efforts on the background history of the JDP and to find as much information about the people who were enslaved, indentured, or free at this location during the 18th and 19th centuries. However, after receiving a voice message from my research partner Sakinaa at the beginning of that week, I added a new task unto my inclusive history researcher duties. In Sakinaa’s message, I was informed that she and I are being asked by Annie, JDP’s site interpreter, to analyze the ways that the words “slave” and “enslavement” have been utilized in historic documents about the JDP. To analyze the usage of said terms, we might look into matters such as the context in which these words are or are not used, who used these terms, which documents include such terms, and other situations and realities that may help progress our research and knowledge.

Tomorrow will be my first research visit to the JDP, and my first trip that I will take to a site to complete research as a member of HCA. Annie and I have corresponded via email about what we believe will be the best documents to view while at the JDP, and because there are many at the site which concern Black Americans, she will draw out ones written in the 18th and 19th century that concern my research. Though this trip will help broaden my background knowledge of the JDP, I can also use it to continue my study of the ways that “slave” and “enslavement” were used by whomever documented incidents regarding American slavery. Though I have just recently started this segment of my research, I do believe that looking into these terms and where they can be found may lead Sakinaa and I to a potentially ground-breaking discovery about the JDP, Delaware, and the entire system which legalized the enslavement of Black Americans.

I will be off-site for most of this week, so I will primarily be completing research remotely. In the future, my supervisor Vertie and I intend to plan more research trips where I will visit archives, repositories, and other sites with sources that will benefit JDP site members as they continue to relay the story of the JDP and the people who labored here, voluntarily and involuntarily.

 

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