Enslaved.org

CTL-E-6356 · Institution · other · 2020–present

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07542 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6356.

Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade, at enslaved.org, is an open-source, open-access platform for discovering the lives of people implicated in the historical slave trade — individuals who were enslaved, enslavers, people connected to the trade, and people who worked to emancipate enslaved people. It is housed at Matrix: Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at Michigan State University, in partnership with Michigan State's Department of History and the University of Maryland's College of Arts and Humanities, among others. Launched publicly on December 1, 2020, it uses linked open data to piece together fragmented lives across dozens of datasets. University of Maryland describes it as an architecture to discover, connect, and visualize 600,000+ people records and five million data points, gathered from archival fragments. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded its initial phases.

The record

• Also known as: Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade

Notes

STAGING: temp id EB-12. Name styling varies across coverage ('Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade,' current, vs 'Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade' in older coverage) — the current form is used. The 600,000+ / five-million statistic is attributed to the University of Maryland partner page in the description itself, per GOV-006. The operated_by edge to Michigan State University is BLOCKED by the schema matrix (School target) — see packet memo. CURATOR'S JUDGMENT (DRAFT): Where SlaveVoyages counts voyages, Enslaved.org restores persons — the recovery method (EB-10) applied at the level of a single named life.

Sources

• UMD History (accessed 2026-10-29): 'Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade (Enslaved.org) is a robust, open-source architecture to discover, connect, and visualize 600,000+ people records and five million data points.' NOTE: this figure is from a partner institution's page, not quoted here from enslaved.org's own homepage. (build store)
• UMD Libraries (accessed 2026-10-29): 'Launched publicly on December 1, 2020, Enslaved.org is using linked-open data to piece together the fragmented lives of 600,000 (and growing) people named across dozens of datasets and millions of data points.' (build store)
• NEH coversheet, MSU (accessed 2026-10-29): '(2) Linked Open Data (LOD): We use linked open data, i.e. structured data available under an open license, with the help of Wikibase, to interconnect individual projects and databases.' (primary source · build store)
• MSU Today (accessed 2026-10-29): 'The project, called "Enslaved: The People of the Historic Slave Trade," is funded by a $1.47 million grant from the Mellon Foundation.'; 'Dean Rehberger, director of Matrix: The Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences at MSU, will lead the project along with Hawthorne and Ethan Watrall.' (build store)
• DHQ 19.1 (accessed 2026-10-29): 'Launched in 2020 and funded by donors (Michigan State University [MSU]; University of California, Riverside; University of Maryland; the National Endowment for the Humanities; and Mellon Foundation), Enslaved.org is a scholarly website housed at Matrix: Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at MSU.' (build store)

More institution records

• District Six Museum
• DJ International Records
• Djamo
• Do or Die
• Documenting the Now
• Don Cornelius Productions

Browse the full directory: all entity records

Record CTL-E-6356 · Combined Graph record U-07542 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 5 sources.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

Cite this record

Citation guidance for teachers, journalists, and funders: How to Cite Us.

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.