On September 7, 2022, Jennifer McGillan presented “The Lantern Project: Digitizing Legal Records of Enslaved Persons” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
The collaborative Lantern Project aims to provide free online access to such primary sources of information about enslaved persons as civil and criminal court records, deeds, probate records, receipts, bills of sale, and more.
“We want to make this easy for everyone to use, with searchable text, transcriptions, and digital images of those original documents—which include the names and descriptions of enslaved persons,” said McGillan, Mississippi State University Libraries coordinator of manuscripts and the university’s primary organizer for the project.
The Lantern Project was funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives and Records Administration. In addition to the Mississippi State University Libraries, project partners include the University of Mississippi Libraries, Delta State University, the Natchez Historical Foundation, Columbus-Lowndes County Public Library System, and Alabama’s Montgomery County Archives.
“Contemporary accounts of the cruel practice of family separation often reference relatives who had ‘vanished into darkness,’ and because so many enslaved people were forbidden to learn to read or write, it was difficult for those families to reconnect,” McGillan said. “The Lantern Project is our attempt to turn on the lights and illuminate the paper trail to help families find each other again.”
Jennifer McGillan became coordinator (head) of Manuscripts at Mississippi State University in 2015. She holds a BA in English from Davidson College, an MLIS-Archives from the University of Pittsburgh, and a JD from New York Law School. McGillan is a founding member and president of the Southeastern Archives Association, member and past president of the Society of Mississippi Archivists, and has served on the board of directors of the Mississippi Historical Society.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.
