This study uses historical records from 36 archives in the United States to analyze 8,437 enslaved people’s sale and/or appraisal prices from 1797 to 1865. Demographic information, including name, year, age/age group, gender, state, and trade/skill notations were recorded when applicable. By calculating average appraisal and sale values across cross-sections of gender (male or female) and age group (0-10 years old, 11-22 years old, 23-39 years old, and 40+ years old), a total of sixteen major comparative prices were analyzed (app/male/0-10; app/female/0-10; sale/male/0-10; sale/female/0-10; app/male/11-22; app/female/11-22; sale/male/11-22; sale/female/11-22; app/male/23-39; app/female/23-39; sale/male/23-39; sale/female/23-39; app/male/40+; app/female/40+; sale/male/40+; sale/female/40+). Scholars have the opportunity to use this data set to understand how enslaved people were valued and appraised. The demographic data included will be useful to those who want to explore various aspects of the history of slavery and enslaved people.

In the 1930s, students at Prairie View State Normal & Industrial College, under the direction of the college’s registrar and Arts and Sciences director, John Brother Cade, participated in a project to interview 229 formerly enslaved individuals from 17 states in the United States, as well as Indian Territory and Canada. Nearly early 70 years since the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, many of these individuals experienced the tail end of slavery as an institution in America, and this project aimed to capture their voices, experiences, and the hardships that they faced in the early years of their lives. Students sought out information regarding food, clothing, housing facilities, quality of life, epistemology, family, and treatment, to capture the perspective of formerly enslaved individuals and the institution of slavery. This dataset, whose fields were extracted from the documents in this archival collection housed at Southern University, compiles key pieces of information these ex-slaves shared with Prairie View students.

This dataset was created from a collection of over nine hundred incidents of sexual violence identified in the mainland North American British colonies and early United States from 1700-1820. Gathered from legal, manuscript, and print records in twenty archives, it identifies over four hundred individuals who were enslaved, of African descent, and/or of Native American descent. This collection offers unique historical evidence about individuals who may not appear in any other extant records. Significantly, it reveals how enslaved and free(d) Black and Indigenous people both addressed and were involved in incidents of sexual violence, revealing how communities of color are far more visible in historical records than has been traditionally recognized.