National Council on Public History

PROPOSAL TYPE

Working Group

SEEKING

• Seeking Additional Participants
• Seeking General Feedback and Interest
• Seeking Specific Expertise

RELATED TOPICS

• Archives
• Public Engagement
• Social Justice

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, many museums, universities, churches, and cities have launched projects to explore and reckon with their histories of slavery. Yet most work independently, with little chance to share their processes, research findings, or learn from one another’s methods or outcomes. This working group brings together researchers and practitioners to share challenges, successes, and best practices in research documentation, ethics, descendant engagement, funding, staffing, and data collection. This session aims to foster a network of support for practitioners, both experienced and new to this work, who are committed to confronting legacies of slavery through collaborative, community-centered, and transparent public history.

DESCRIPTION

Over the past decade, a growing number of institutions reckoned with their historical ties to slavery and the slave trade. These efforts include historic sites (Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters), city projects (Enslaved Bostonians), universities (Brown, Georgetown, Yale, Harvard, and William & Mary), churches (Old North Church, King’s Chapel, etc.), and private corporations (State Street). Each project has taken a different approach to uncovering, documenting, and interpreting its institutional past. Some rely on volunteer researchers, while others dedicate significant resources to professional research teams and long-term public engagement initiatives.

Despite this activity, many of these projects operate in isolation. Few opportunities exist for practitioners to share successes, failures, and the ethical and logistical challenges they face. Questions of how to engage descendant communities, fund and sustain research, manage sensitive data, and define “success” often arise. This results in many parallel efforts, each reinventing methods that could be strengthened through collaboration.

This working group invites scholars, museum professionals, archivists, and community partners engaged in projects examining institutional histories of slavery to exchange lessons learned in key areas: research methodology, descendant collaboration, data stewardship, staffing and volunteer management, interpretive approaches, and institutional politics. The session will provide space for honest conversation about the tensions that emerge when institutions attempt to reconcile their histories with commitments to equity and repair.

As a researcher with experience in both the King’s Chapel Slavery Research Project and the Harvard Slavery Remembrance Project, I have seen firsthand the transformative potential—and institutional vulnerability—of this work. In an era when historical reckoning is increasingly politicized, building supportive professional networks is more critical than ever.

I hope to find a variety of working group members from other organizations exploring their histories of slavery who are willing to share pitfalls and best practices. I hope we can work on developing a framework for more sustainable, transparent, and collaborative approaches to researching and interpreting histories of slavery with hopes of achieving institutional accountability and repair.

If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly:
Janika Isakson Dillon, Northeastern University, [email protected]

All feedback and offers of assistance should be sent by  November 15, 2025. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.

Discussion