#174: Judith Giesberg - "Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families"

Perhaps the worst punishment that can be inflicted on someone is to be forced away from one's own family. When the slave trade was active in the United States, potentially a million people were sold away from their families either for punishment or profit. After slavery ended, many of those who had not seen their families for years took out ads in newspapers, hoping for a clue that would help them reunite with their families. In "Last Seen: The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families," Dr. Judith Giesberg shows how freedpeople used newspapers to keep their ultimate dream alive and rebuild their families. In this episode, she also describes how her team of researchers have cataloged thousands of those advertisements, in hopes of shedding light on the fight for human dignity, and so that descendants of slaves might learn about what their families went through.

Information on Judith Giesberg's book can be found at https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Last-Seen/Judith-Giesberg/9781982174323

The "Last Seen" project can be found at informationwanted.org

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