Uncovering Truths: Ancestry’s Groundbreaking “Articles of Enslavement” Collection

In this powerful episode of The Color Between the Lines, host Esther Dillard speaks with Nika Sewell-Smith, Senior Story Producer and Genealogist at Ancestry.com, about a revolutionary new research tool: the Articles of Enslavement Collection.

This collection uses AI to surface hundreds of thousands of historical newspaper clippings that mention enslaved individuals—freedom seekers, auction listings, and more—helping Black families trace their roots through a dark but vital chapter in American history.

Nika breaks down:

• What the Articles of Enslavement project is
• How artificial intelligence was used to identify and index these historical records
• Why this resource could be a game changer for Black genealogical research
• The emotional impact of finding specific names, heights, weights, and hometowns of enslaved ancestors

Whether you're new to genealogy or continuing the work of a loved one, this episode will move you and provide a valuable roadmap for discovering family history once thought lost.

👉 Listen in to discover how our ancestors' stories are being reclaimed, one article at a time.

🔔 Subscribe to the podcast for more enlightening talks and join us in exploring how historical narratives shape our future. You can also watch it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@thecolorbetweenthelines

Transcript

0:04

this edition of the Color between the Lines, I had the pleasure of speaking with the folks over@ancestry.com and this is a game changer for anyone who likes to do a family tree or dive deep into their own family history and try to find, Follow it all the way back into the areas of enslavement and back to where you came from in Africa. This would have been a game changer for my dad, who several years ago passed away, but he did extensive research on our own family and went back about four or five generations. My cousin got involved, and then they found, you know, where it came, where the ship came in. And everything else. It was really a thing. The reason why I'm explaining this is because Ancestry is opened. There are articles of enslavement archives or records, and what that means is that they've indexed hundreds of thousands of newspaper articles that mention Africans or those who are on the run during that horrible time in our American history. the person who broke it all down, her name is Nika Sewell Smith, and she's the senior story producer and genealogist@ancestry.com. here's some of our conversation. I am really intrigued by this entire thing because I had not heard of this before, and probably many of our listeners had not heard of it before. So could you perhaps just provide us details of this groundbreaking expansion and just break down what is the Articles of Enslavement collection? So Articles of Enslavement is an extraordinary collection that we use proprietary AI to single out articles that reference the enslaved. And within the collection currently are, freedom seekers, so people who will be considered fugitive slaves. Along with auctions and, by using AI, we isolated the articles. We then took them to humans to index them. And they are very, very detailed. They include things like the height, the weight of the enslaved, their name, the name of the slaveholder. Especially with the freedom seekers, you can find multiple locations that they might have been enslaved in, who captured them, all sorts of details that really give you a, bird's eye view into the institution of enslavement within the United States. And the collection which came out last year actually was bolstered. We added more than 500,000 new names to this collection. Which for me, you know, being someone who was on the ground working on this, you know, seeing the 180,000 names that we had last year to get this. This big update has been. It's just, I just. I'm so excited for people to be able to use it. How do you hope that people will use, these archived newspaper articles? And how will it, I guess, in your mind, change the way black families are able to, do research on their own history? I think primarily, if folks are not quite sure who to look for in the collection, they can just start off geographically. For instance, my family is connected to Louisiana, Mississippi, Kansas, Missouri. I have a lot of different locations. But if I'm really interested in what was going on with regard to enslaved people, the newspaper in a geographical location would be one of the places that I could find that information. Someone could start with just the county or. Or the parish that their family is from. But if they've done the work of tracing from now, then backwards through history to get as close to 1865 as possible, they could actually search for the names of their ancestors within the collection. Especially if they have things like, a birth year, or, you know, associated counties. And then even. It's not even just for those who have ancestors who are formerly enslaved. You also have people whose ancestors may have been enslavers or who are going to also appear in this collection. Because it's not just the names of the enslaved that are indexed. It's also the names of the enslavers, slave traders, pretty much anyone that was involved with the slave trading system. Can a person perhaps even trace back to the motherland of Africa and where, what region that they come from, or does it extend that far potentially? What you'll see in some of the earlier articles are these advertisements of shiploads of enslaved people being brought to the United States. And I remember the first time I encountered those articles, I was kind of struck at how many weeks they ran. They'd run for, like four weeks, eight weeks, until they had sold everyone off the ship. And you'll find them in those locations that were central to the transatlantic slave trade, like a Richmond, like a Charleston, like a New Orleans, where, you know, they'll literally tell you it's Negroes or Africans. They would use the term Africans. That would delineate between people who were enslaved in the United States and who had been, quote, seasoned, meaning they could speak English, they knew what was happening, in terms of the system, as opposed to folks who were brought over in the slave trade. And they'll tell you exactly where they got the shipload of people from And you're looking at this reading and going like, there's 400 people and they're selling them off. This one, like, it. It brings, you know, movies like Roots, you know, 12 years of slave, all this stuff that's a part of our cultural lexicon with regard to enslavement. It really brings it home because it's like, this is it. This isn't, you know, a fictional, character, which in those two movies weren't fictional. Right. But it's like, oh, no, like, this is real. And these ads were happening, and it's literally telling you where they took the people from. When you were looking through some of those archives and newspaper articles and finding some of your own family, how did that emotionally affect you? I think for me, what stood out was just how big the system was. When you're looking at some of these freedom seeker ads, there could be three different states mentioned in one ad. For me, especially with someone who was able to abscond that far, in some ways, I started cheering them on, hoping that they were never caught. You know, because the newspaper that were printed could be in Natchez, but then they might have been enslaved in Louisiana, but then they came from another place. So there's three locations. So I often find myself doing that. I was shocked, by the ads that ran after slavery was technically abolished. I'm like, how are you placing an ad for someone where the system doesn't exist? You know what I mean? And then that's when you have to start looking at when each state ratified the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, to figure out when it became legal there. So then, of course, it's possible that they could have placed the ad and it would have been completely legal there. So there's. There's a lot of that. There's. There's, seeing the names of people that absconded or auctioned off where my family was from, and just like, hoping, you know, that I would come across the name of somebody that I knew. But. But every time I get into this collection, I find something new that I didn't see the last time that I was in it. And so in some ways, you know, I often feel like, you know, all those hundreds of thousands of enslaved people, they just keep giving back to me or anyone that's in the collection because of what you learn every time you get into it. So if a person is interested in looking into these newspaper articles, what should they do next? How should they sign up? So this collection is free. And not just the index for it is free, but the actual access to the newspapers that the ad or the auction was printed on is free. And so all you need is just a free registered account on Ancestry, and then you can just go in and literally start searching. If you hit the landing page, you'll actually be able to interact with it because there's a map. One of the things that I was very adamant about that we have with this project is that people could see this scale of, the articles. And so the darker green you'll find on the map, the more articles there are. And not only do you see that, but you can also go down to the county or the parish level. So, again, if you just want to see how many thousands of articles are available in one location, you can actually drill down on that. But simply stated, you just need a free Ancestry account. That's it. What do you see in the future with this kind of. This kind of collection? Expansion. What do you. What do you hope that others will take from this? And because I can see documentaries, I can see in my head all these different ways in which people can use it, not only for a personal point of view, but making it such a larger impact on people in the United States who are really thirsting for history. What do you think will. Will be used, how this will be used in the future? Yeah. Just like you, I think the sky is the limit. And especially it's one thing for records to be in an archive and someone has to go there to get it, but the fact that this is made available to anyone with an Internet connection, that's what makes it so many possibilities just out there. Right. You could do a million and one different things. And so I think, especially from a geographical perspective, there are going to be locations that are going to really learn about more of the role that they had in the slavery system and how they can maybe tell that story, better or just add more breadth to the stories that they're telling. There could be historical sites that are connected to some of these articles that can do that. I definitely. I would love a documentary. I love documentaries. So, especially with time and place and people and figuring out, again, for these folks that absconded how long did they go. Did they make it all the way to Canada, or did they make it to a free state? Like, there's. There's so much that's there, but we're just getting started with this. There's only two article types in here right now. And so that's the beauty of, of using machine learning and using AI is that you can. You're just. You're isolating, you're telling it, go find this for me. And right now, with these two types, this is how much information we have. Just imagine what happens when we add more. So, you know, the sky is really the limit. I'm, I'm. For me, I just really hope that by centralizing this, people have access to it quick, more quickly, and they can connect those dots. Because sometimes researching the enslaved can seem so daunting and impossible. But with this, you've got names, you've got locations, you've got people. It's those really critical proof points that will confirm or deny whether or not you have the right enslaved person that you've been researching. I have a technical question, and that has to do with. Because I've used AI in the past in terms of, trying to do some research on things, and sometimes AI does not get it quite right. How do you make sure that the information is accurate and that's not made up? Because sometimes ChatGPT can make some major mistakes. So with this. Actually, this is probably our fourth or fifth project working with newspapers in this particular way. So we're kind of, I would say, a little veterany, when it comes to this. So one of the first things we did was we isolated obituaries in the newspaper. Then we isolated birth announcements, then we isolated marriage announcements. Then, we have stories and events index, which indexes things from military. You know what I mean? So really all we're using the AI for is to find the article types. And, you know, as with. With anything with AI, it's whatever you put into it to create the prompt is what makes the difference. And so we had to use a variety of terms. I learned a lot of, because I could think of, if I'm looking for an article for an enslaved person, I'm going to use these terms. But as you start to browse more geographically, they could use different terms in this paper versus another one across the state line. We had to really be mindful of how enslaved people were discussed in the paper, the ways in which they would be discussed, the different article types. And the AI was literally just used to. To find the articles and the millions and millions of pages the humans are who went in and indexed the information. And we wanted. We absolutely wanted it and needed it that way because we wanted it to be as accurate as possible. Final word. I cannot wait to turn this loose to everyone. Just because I know that by unearthing the information this way, this is literally going to be generations shattering and shifting for people. And especially when we're Talking about the 160th anniversary, anniversary of Juneteenth this year, I really want folks to lean into really trying their best to find out who was alive for that day and who maybe hope that they could live to that day, but never live to see it, but may live within this collection. That's it for this edition of the Color between the Lines. If this conversation inspired you or moved you, please subscribe to the Color between the lines podcast on YouTube, on iHeart, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Esther Dillard.