Gwen Gosney Erickson, Guilford College Archivist and Librarian,and Richard Cox, UNCG Digital Technology Consultant, share theirexperiences preserving and making publicly accessible primary source materialslike letters, newspaper articles, and deeds thatdocument anti-slavery and slavery activities in Greensboro and in NorthCarolina. 

As Friends Historical CollectionLibrarian and College Archivist, Gwen Gosney Erickson manages the special collectionsunit of Guilford College, which includes anti-slavery related Quaker documentsand letters. Guilford’scampus is notable for its history as a school and as land where local AfricanAmericans worked with New Garden Quakers, including famed Quakerabolitionist Levi Coffin, to implement Underground Railroad activities.Enslaved Africans escaped to the Guilford College Woods, where they weresupported in their flight to freedom. Guilford is one of the few collegecampuses listed by the U.S. Department of the Interior as a National HistoricDistrict and is part of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

Richard Cox will share the origins ofthe Digital Library on American Slavery project at UNCG and how individuals mayuse it for research and teaching. The DLAS is an extensive collection of legislativeand county court petitions, runaway slave ads, insurance registries, deeds, andtrade voyages is the largest single index to slave-related public documentsfrom the pre-Civil war era from the Southern states, and the largest collectionof African American names from that period.

This program is held in conjunctionwith the Sanford Biggers exhibition. Support is provided by the N.C. Arts Council,a division of the Department of Natural & Cultural Resources. 

• weatherspoon.uncg.edu
• 336-334-5770
• Free to the public