Article Written By Sydney Trent for the Washington Post Dec. 1, 2020 at 12:34 p.m. EST
Daryle Williams was emotionally torn, pushing the decision right up against deadline. As a history professor at the University of Maryland, Williams had been researching the slave trade in 19th-century Brazil when he came upon two newspaper ads featuring runaway Africans. One mentioned a mother, Sancha, escaping with her two sons — Luis, 9, and Tiburcio, 4 — in 1855. The other referenced a young woman, Theresa, who fled with her nursing daughter in 1842. Tasked with entering his findings into what has become part of a groundbreaking new public slavery database, Williams was unsure about what to do. Should he create a separate line for the baby, even without a name?
“From one database perspective, I could have erased her” from the record, Williams said. And yet, even anonymous, the baby ”was part of the lived historical experience. … She was important for Theresa. She should be important for us as well.”
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