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Self Emancipated and Enslaved People in Kentucky (SEEK)

The SEEK Project locates, collects, digitizes, and provides metadata for fugitive slave advertisements from Kentucky newspapers through a digital archive. SEEK is affiliated with the national Freedom on the Move project.

Welcome to the SEEK Research Guide

The Self Emancipated and Enslaved People in Kentucky (SEEK) Project is a partnership between several faculty with the University of Kentucky Libraries (UKL) and the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies (CIBS). Since 2021, the SEEK team has developed a student-focused evaluation and clipping workflow that has resulted in the collection of hundreds of escaped slave ads published in historic Kentucky newspapers. During the late 18th through the mid-19th centuries, the Commonwealth of Kentucky saw significant movement of fugitive slaves seeking freedom. These migrations were widely documented in fugitive slave advertisements in local newspapers published throughout the state.

 

 

University of Kentucky students review and clip fugitive slave advertisements from these historic Kentucky newspapers to create the content available here.

Freedom on the Move

SEEK is affiliated with the Freedom on the Move Project, a growing database of fugitives from slavery in 18th and 19th century America based at Cornell University.