Here is a hint: the frequency of surnames was not the only difference between the names on manifests from the Upper South and those on manifests from the Lower South. Day names and place names—both of which were common in West Africa—were extremely rare on manifests drafted in Virginia and Maryland. Fewer than 100 enslaved people–less than a tenth of one percent–trafficked from the Chesapeake to New Orleans claimed day names like “Cuffy” (derived from “Kofi,” the Akan word for someone born on a Friday), “Juba” (an Ashanti word for someone born on a Monday), “Friday,” “Monday,” “Christmas,” or “Easter.” While still not the norm, those names were approximately ten-times more common on manifests from the Lower South.

Ironically (surely we can agree that this is ironic), I found the explanation I was looking for in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. As you can see in the graph below (on the left), and as you surely know, three-quarters of the transatlantic and intra-American trafficks of enslaved Africans to Virginia and Maryland took place prior to 1750. In fact, both Virginia and Maryland banned the trafficking of captive Africans from foreign shores prior to the federal ban of 1808; Virginia did so in 1778, and Maryland outlawed both the international and domestic traffic of enslaved people into the state in 1783. (Given the enslaved population of the Chesapeake was largely growing as a result of natural reproduction by 1720 or 1730, enslavers in the region decided they didn’t “need” the transatlantic and intra-American trades anyway.)

This—all of this—is what I mean when I say this data cannot be understood, not fully, unless we understand its multiple meanings in relation to kinship. On the one hand, this data represents kinfolk, yes. Every single person in in Oceans of Kinfolk was somebody’s somebody. They were individuals, too, but don’t you see how thoroughly the relational and individual entwined? And whether the bearers of those names came from families enslaved in North America for generations or families just recently uprooted and rerooted in American soil, we cannot ignore the ways the names listed on each and every manifest encapsulate centuries of ancestral history. But recall, too, that these documents are Janus-faced. They are evidence of—were tools of—grotesque violence against the same kinships to which the enslaved insurgently testified. So how, then, does one do justice to all of these truths? 

I thought, for a time, I could learn that from you.

I arrived at the University of California - Santa Cruz in January of 2021, having defended my dissertation less than a month prior. In fact, I left my parents’ home late on Christmas night, as soon as the festivities were over. That is how eager I was to get to California and to get to work, with you. Driving across the country, I thought about what it would mean to join you, as I soon would, as Co-Editor of a project that was not only one of the oldest digital humanities projects around, but the one that had appointed itself steward of so much of the evidence documenting the gravest crime humans have ever committed against themselves.

A month after I arrived, Jamelle Bouie published an essay in the New York Times Sunday Review about your project—which was then my project, too—and the complications of producing data about slavery and enslaved people. Jamelle conducted a formal interview with me for the piece, but the truth is we had been talking about this topic for more than a decade by then. By the time the article came out though, I had a nagging feeling that the decision to bring my work, and myself, to Slave Voyages may not have been wise. And by the time the Economist piece about Oceans of Kinfolk came out, several months later, I had developed serious concerns. In fact, while I appreciated the Economist piece for drawing attention to the most devastating truth contained in my dataset (the scale of family separations), I worried that the article was drawing attention to a project I was growing less and less proud of, at least in the state that it then existed. 

You see, I came to Slave Voyages because I thought doing so was the best way to get the data I had worked so hard on and cared so much about online. “They’ve been doing this a very long time,” I thought. “It will get done the way it should.” Pretty quickly, however, I learned that the grant funding my post-doc did not actually fund the addition of my dataset, which was at its core a dataset of people, to the site. Instead, it funded the addition of my data about voyages to an existing database, the Intra-American Slave Trade Database.

But this was no problem, I was told, because another scholar, the project’s founder, was willing to integrate my data with a dataset of his own, one he would soon be adding to the site. The two datasets–African Origins and Oceans of Kinfolk–would have separate user interfaces, meaning it would appear to users that they were distinct datasets, but in the back-end of the site, it would be the same set of columns and rows. And that is what happened.

Now, I know you all think this worked out fine, but the fact is, it did not. The reason for this is that the two datasets were created from sources with very little in common. After all, the history the two datasets represented had very little in common. For example, in African Origins, “owner” referred to the owner of the ship. In my dataset, however, “owner” referred to enslavers, and as a rule (there were a few exceptions), enslavers did not own the vessels on which they transported captives. I pointed this problem out at its inception. Months later, however, I noticed it had not been rectified, and as a result, men in my dataset who were enslavers were instead listed as ship owners, which they were not. To make matters worse, when I pointed this out, again, I was scolded by Slave Voyages’s technical lead in a reply-all email for having “bad data.”

This, however, was far from the only problem (or problematic exchange) with roots in the decision—which was, it bears repeating, not my decision—to integrate my dataset into another dataset. Unfortunately, I quickly became so demoralized that I soon found myself hesitating to voice my concerns.

But let me be clear. Technical problems were not the primary reason I ultimately chose to resign from Slave Voyages and move my work elsewhere. On the contrary, I believe the technical issues were symptomatic of a much larger problem, which is that the Slave Voyages project operates as if it is accountable only to itself. It is a self-contained and insular universe.

This fact has many, many unfortunate implications, but I will highlight just one, which is the absolute failure of the Slave Voyages project to engage Descendants of the enslaved in a sustained, structured or meaningful way. At times, I have wondered if the team does not feel compelled to seek such engagement because so few of the sources used to construct the various Slave Voyages databases include the names of enslaved persons. Frankly, however, this makes no sense to me.

Isn’t the dehumanizing and anonymizing nature of the records (and thus the data, and thus the data visualizations, and thus…) all the more reason why your broader work must be reparative? You are dealing in documents of death and alienation. Does it not occur to you that you have a responsibility to work towards contrary ends?

Perhaps, however, you feel such work is not yours to do; your calling is education, not justice. The problem with this logic, I am sad to say, is that whether you intend it to or not, your work will ripple through this world in ways that are profoundly moral, ethical, and spiritual. If you choose to replicate the lies of enslavers–that humanity should have a price and that kinship is rendered null and void by the ledger book–then those are the lies that will seep not only into our world but into ourselves. If such lies are worth repeating–as evidence of harm, as genealogical signposts, as scholarly research, as whatever–then so be it. But surely we must call them what they are and state plainly why we are repeating them.

By now, I hope you are beginning to understand why I felt I had no choice but to depart from our collaboration. And this brings me, at last, to the reason I am writing to you now.

In June of 2023, I informed the Slave Voyages team of my decision to resign as Co-Editor of the project as well as from its Operational Committee. I also shared my wishes that my work be removed from the Slave Voyages website. As I explained, I was revising and improving the database and republishing it at Kinfolkology.org. As a precaution, I even trademarked the name “Oceans of Kinfolk,” intending to reserve it for the dataset I built as well as my forthcoming book. (I had no interest in establishing legal ownership of the data itself, however, because I did not and do not believe ownership is the appropriate model for data of this kind.)

Around the same time, I had the honor of Co-Founding a new project, Kinfolkology, with Eola Lewis Dance. Kinfolkology’s foundational mission is to integrate datawork related to slavery and the lives of the enslaved with justice work, including demands for reparations, and the engagement of Descendant communities: commitments informed by the conviction that Eola and I share, which is that while enslaved ancestors may no longer be living, they were and are part of communities and families that are very much alive. For this reason, we are committed to establishing a governance model for Kinfolkology that is built around the concept of structural parity, or total shared authority, with Descendants. Structural parity is also guiding our efforts to engineer a new model of data stewardship, one that honors the work of individual scholars, yes, but also the claims of living communities and families to that very same data—the claims of kinfolk.

As I am sure you recall, however, the Slave Voyages team refused to honor my request to remove my work and offered at least three reasons for this decision in writing and in the course of a virtual conversation. The first reason–offered by the Slave Voyages technical lead–was that removing my data was “too complicated,” because “there’s not a delete button.” The second reason, stated by another member of the team, was that “this data is an asset.” (While I appreciated the candor of this statement, I am mystified by it, especially considering that our conversation included an individual whose great-great-great-grandmother is very likely among those listed in Oceans of Kinfolk.) The third and final reason offered was that individuals other than myself played a role in the conversion of my data from Excel/SPSS spreadsheet to online resource.

I have nothing to say in regard to the first two arguments cited above. As to the third, I am more than happy to acknowledge its truthfulness, and I thank the relevant parties for their hard work. But let me be clear. I remain and will ever remain unmoved.

By refusing to remove my work, you are violating widely accepted norms related to data consent and scholarly collaboration. Far more importantly, to me at least, you are refusing to heed the clear calls emanating from this data to acknowledge and engage kin and community. I call upon you to listen instead.

Do not think, however, that just because I have spent these many pages laying out for you the irrefutable demands of the dead to engage with the living that resound in my spreadsheets, there is no call issuing forth from yours. The call is there. I cannot tell you why you do not hear it but I promise you, it is there. Listen for it. Listen for it in your bloodless data visualizations. Listen for it in your imputed death ratios. Listen for it in the silence of 12.5 million names. And if, after all that, you still hear nothing at all, I ask you: What right do you have to do this work?

Sincerely,

Jennie K. Williams

Former Co-Editor, Slave Voyages

Co-Founder, Kinfolkology

Author, Oceans of Kinfolk