Mellon grants $1M to deepen and improve Freedom on the Move

The Mellon Foundation has awarded a $1 million grant to significantly expand and improve the Freedom on the Move database. The funding will support deepening the richness and quality of metadata (such as names, family relationships, clothing, ethnic identity, and other personal details) which are often buried in the original sources. This funding will also allow FOTM to launch several initiatives, including hiring graduate and post-doctoral researchers, recruiting summer data fellows to improve archive metadata, supporting graduate research assistantships at Cornell and Howard, and hosting a two-day Freedom on the Move Symposium in years two and three of the grant to showcase archival-based scholarship.