Statement of principles
Jeannette Ehlers and La Vaughn Belle, I Am Queen Mary, 2018. Copenhagen, Denmark. Photograph: Barnard College..
- We are dedicated to using the digital repository to highlight the ways in which diverse communities and artists are in conversation about the difficult histories and legacies of slavery, and about how to best memorialize slavery in the monument landscape.
- We assert the importance of multi-perspectival and nuanced stories about the history of slavery and its memorialization in objects. We understand ourselves to be part of a global movement of community leaders, educators, scholars, and students who are challenging the inherited history of slavery through memorialization efforts and commemorative activities.
- We center both anti-racism and feminism in our efforts to chronicle fully and forthrightly the slave past, especially Black women’s vital leadership and contributions to their own emancipatory project. The project documents numerous commemorative works dedicated to Black women who actively resisted the system of slavery.
- We are committed to a digital practice that affirms the importance of documenting the slave past, and centers the various ways that slavery has been remembered. We consider our work to be a deliberate intervention into the exclusionary spaces of the digital humanities. We also understand that all data and datasets are shaped by decisions regarding historical significance and value.
Acknowledgment of Principles
Our principles are inspired by the Black digital humanities work of Dr. P. Gabrielle Foreman and her collaborators on the Colored Conventions: Bringing Nineteenth-Century Black Organizing to Digital Life. Forman’s award-winning digital project has served as an important model for us. In turn, the Colored Convention Project Principles were inspired by the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing created at the Working Group Meeting on Globalization and Trade in Jemez, New Mexico, on December 8, 1996.
Written by Renée Ater and Grace Yasumura, updated January 26, 2026.