Project History
Building on Scarlet and Black Research
The New Jersey Slavery Records project builds on the work of Rutgers historians who took a deep dive into the historical connections between slavery and the university and wrote the book Scarlet and Black, Volume 1: Slavery and Dispossession in Rutgers History, edited by Deborah Gray White and Marisa Fuentes. The researchers went on to trace Rutgers Black history to the present in Volumes 2 and 3. Following the publication of the Scarlet and Black books, archival materials documenting African American history at Rutgers from slavery to the twentieth century have been compiled and published in the Scarlet and Black Digital Archive, curated by Dr. Jesse Bayker.
In the course of this research, the Scarlet and Black team learned that Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives hold a treasure trove of documents that illuminate the history of slavery in Middlesex County beyond the walls of the university. These documents describe hundreds of events in the lives of enslaved people who lived in surrounding communities. Dr. Bayker began compiling a dataset of names and events related to these archival records.
From this original dataset, Dr. Bayker began developing a digital project to create a searchable database of slavery-era records that would reach beyond Rutgers. From 2021 to 2024, Dr. Bayker worked on developing the New Jersey Slavery Records dabatase while serving as the digital archivist at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. A team of undergraduate and graduate students at the institute assisted with transcribing sources, collecting data, and digitizing archival documents to expand the database.
Partnership with On These Grounds: Slavery and the University
During the formative stage of development in 2021-2022, a partnership with On These Grounds: Slavery and the University shaped the intellectual trajectory of the New Jersey Slavery Records project. Funded by the Mellon Foundation, On These Grounds was a cross-institutional initiative to create, evaluate, and disseminate a Linked Open Data ontology focused on adequately describing the lived experiences of those enslaved individuals who labored in bondage at higher education institutions and who are represented in those institutions’ archival holdings. The project was led by Dr. Sharon Leon with core partners at Michigan State University, Georgetown University, and the University of Virginia.
Dr. Bayker led a team of Rutgers collaborators who engaged in an intensive year-long process of testing the alpha version of the data model created by On These Grounds. In addition to MSU, Georgetown, and UVA, we worked with testing partners at Washington and Lee University, University of Georgia, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Hampden-Sydney College to apply the linked open data ontology to our archival holdings, test data creation workflows, and provide feedback on revisions to the model.
This testing period culminated in the launch of the New Jersey Slavery Records website in September 2022.
Regional Collaboration with NESRI
In 2022, New Jersey Slavery Records joined the Northeast Slavery Records Collaborative, which develops and maintains an online searchable compilation of records called the Northeast Slavery Records Index (NESRI). NESRI compiles records of enslavement, including population census records as well as records that identify individual enslaved persons and enslavers, for the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
Funded by an American Council of Learned Societies Digital Justice Grant, the collaboration with NESRI bolstered efforts to create datasets related to slavery in New Jersey. The data published on the New Jersey Slavery Records website is periodically aggregated into the regional index to increase the discoverability of this information.