Center for the Study of the Gulf South
Center for the Study of the Gulf South
A collaborative effort to compile and make available newspaper advertisements placed by masters seeking the capture and return of runaway slaves. Dr. Douglas B. Chambers and Dr. Max Grivno, CSGS members, are focused on creating a central repository for runaway slave advertisements. Wherever there was slavery, there were runaway slaves; and wherever there was slavery, and newspapers, there were runaway slave advertisements.
The project is a partnership between the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the Mississippi Digital Library, and the USM history program. CWGM will digitize, transcribe, and provide historical context for nearly 50,000 pages of documents from the state’s governors’ papers from the late 1850s through the early 1880s. Thanks to the wide array of nineteenth-century Mississippians who contacted their governor — rich and poor, black and white, men and women, native-born and immigrant — and the broad scope of the project, CWGM will help scholars, teachers, students, and the public hear from Mississippians who are often absent from traditional archival records and better understand the state in the Civil War era. Dr. Susannah Ural, CSGS member, is the Project Director.