An Open Educational Resource (OER) is currently in development with UNL's Center for Digital Research in the Humanities in conjunction with the Initiative's curricular programs which will provide crucial classroom feedback on its design and implementation.
The OER will contain:
- significant cases in U.S. history related to race and racialization
- relevant predecessor cases in the colonial period
- freedom suits and habeas petitions brought in U.S. territories, federal districts, national waters, and colonies, including Liberia
- related interpretive content
- critical storytelling from racialized and descendant communities
- media objects including documentary film
- research in non-digitized court records around the U.S.
This public facing OER will help scholars, teachers, students, communities, and descendants to piece together (and pull apart) how law and legal processes shaped the construction of race, slavery, freedom, and unfreedom across U.S. history to today. It will serve as a research tool for studying how people engage with critical histories, comprehend the meaning of historical evidence, and absorb the meaning of unfamiliar stories, storytelling, and historical perspectives on present experiences.