Freedom on the Move (FOTM) is a public history and digital humanities project that recovers and shares the stories of enslaved people in North America who resisted bondage by escaping. Centered on thousands of “runaway” advertisements that enslavers placed in newspapers from the colonial era through the Civil War, FOTM transforms these archival fragments into a free, crowdsourced database. Each ad—often the only surviving record of an individual’s life—contains details such as names, skills, family ties, clothing, languages, and acts of resistance. By collecting and transcribing these ads, the project makes visible the everyday courage of self-liberating people and offers descendants, educators, researchers, and the public an unparalleled resource for studying slavery and freedom.