Before she shares the stories of riotous twentieth century black girls in her 2019 book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Saidiya Hartman first reflects on excavating these stories from archives of old journals, photos, and social worker notes:
“Every historian of the multitude, the dispossessed, the subaltern, and the enslaved is forced to grapple with the power and the authority of the archive and the limits it sets on what can be known, whose perspective matters, and who is endowed with the gravity and authority of historical actor.” 1
I hadn’t thought of myself as much of a historian when I stumbled upon the Library of Virginia’s digitized collection of “Runaway and Escaped Slaves” records. But Fugitive Data Portraits: Self-Emancipation in Virginia is a history project that aims to provide a glimpse into the lives of some of Virginia’s earliest freedom fighters. Freeing oneself, or stealing oneself, from slavery was an act that agitated the social and economic fabric of American society in colonial and antebellum years, contributing to an almost complete unraveling in the wake of the Civil War. An act that for many meant fleeing with family or reconnecting with those already on the other side of bondage, but for most meant leaving loved ones behind. An act that led some to a taste of freedom, but others to physical mutilation, permanent disfigurement, or death. This project reflects on and uplifts “what can be known” of the courageous souls who threw a wrench in the machinery of slavery in Virginia by daring to escape.
This work is subject to the same challenge of grappling with “who is endowed with the gravity and authority of historical actor” that Hartman speaks of. Personal narratives, interviews, and oral histories of self-emancipation provide context and a counter-narrative to county and financial records that primarily exist to document property loss, not rebel activity. These archives help shed light on the identities of these brave individuals and collectives. What we can learn about these revolutionaries through these sources is only overshadowed by what we can’t know because of the records that no longer or never existed.
Fugitive Data Portraits is also a data project. As a software engineer, data scientist, and linguist, I’ve come to appreciate the power of using language and data together to tell dynamic and complex stories. I also find inspiration in the works of those like W.E.B. Du Bois, who at the turn of the twentieth century was experimenting with using data visualizations to communicate the progress of Blacks in America in the years after Emancipation. He debuted his findings at the 1900 Paris Exposition with “The American Negro in Paris”. The goal of this project is to use a similar practice by pairing quantitative archival research with historical narratives to contextualize and uncover stories that are often footnotes in, or altogether omitted from the historical record.
Coming soon.
Coming soon.
[1] Hartman, S. V. (2019). Wayward lives, beautiful experiments: intimate histories of social upheaval. First edition. W.W. Norton & Company.