4/28/2022
NMAAHC and Local Historians Team Up to Preserve Tale of Maryland Freedmen's School
Breaking Newstags: Reconstruction, African American history, Freedmens Schools
A month before the Civil War formally ended, a 20-year-old Black woman and prolific writer named Edmonia Highgate came from upstate New York to Harford County to launch a school for former slaves.
It became one of three Freedmen's Bureau schools in Harford County - free schools created by Congress in 1865 to "help formerly enslaved people transition from slavery to freedom and citizenship."
Now Highgate's experiences at the Harford County school will become part of the Smithsonian, thanks to the National Museum of African American History & Culture's new transcription project.
The Hosanna School Museum, in Darlington, is collaborating on the project, which will transcribe records revealing untold stories of the African-American experience during the post-Civil War and Reconstruction eras, the museum said in a press release.
More than 1.7 million records were created by the national Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands - the so-called "Freedmen's Bureau" - between 1865 and 1872, says the Hosanna School Museum. Only 2% of the 95,000 entries on the National Register of Historic Places focus on the African American experience, founder and CEO of the Virtual Reality Collaboration Lab (VRCOLAB), in a press release.
VRCOLAB worked with Hosanna School Museum to create scans of the museum for the immersive 3-D virtual reality experience for the transcribers.
comments powered by Disqus
News
- How Tina Turner Escaped Abuse and Reclaimed her Name
- The Biden Administration Wants to Undo the Damage of Urban Highways. It Won't be Simple
- AAUP: Fight Tooth and Nail Against Florida's Higher Ed Agenda Because Your State is Next
- Texas GOP's Ten Commandments School Bill Fails
- Former Alabama Governors: We Regret Overseeing Executions
- Jeff Sharlet on the Intersectional Erotics of Fascism
- Scholars Stage Teach-in on Racism in DeSantis's Back Yard
- Paul Watanabe, Historian and Manzanar Survivor, Makes Sure History Isn't Forgotten
- Massachusetts-Based Historians: Book Bans in Florida Affect Us, Too
- Deborah Lipstadt's Work Abroad as Antisemitism Envoy Complicated by Definitional Dispute