About the Project

Founded in 1991, the Race and Slavery Petitions Project is designed to locate, collect, organize, and publish virtually all surviving legislative petitions, and a large selected group of county court petitions concerning slavery in the South. The project covers the period from the beginnings of statehood to the end of slavery (1770s to 1860s). Photocopies of the original documents are housed in the Race and Slavery Petitions Project Archive at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. To provide access to the wealth of information in the archive, a searchable database was created. It gives the names, status (slave or free), and color of petitioner[s], subject of petition, and other data, including county of origin, filing date, and disposition. It also includes a brief abstract for each document. The project is divided into two series:

Series 1: Legislative Petitions

Includes approximately 3,000 petitions, and 20,000 pages of documentary evidence, principally from seven states (Delaware, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia). This website contains information from this series.

Series 2: County Court Petitions

Includes approximately 15,500 petitions and 124,000 pages of documentary evidence from fifteen states and the District of Columbia. The Project is currently working on Series 2 petitions which will become available in the next few years.