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The National Museum of African American History and Culture's Slavery and Freedom collection explores the founding of the nation through the lens of the African American experience from the development of the Atlantic world in the 15th century up through the Reconstruction Acts following the Civil War. Newspapers in this collection include notifications of sales of enslaved persons, newspapers asking for rewards of fugitive slaves, and the current events that impacted enslaved individuals. These documents help explore how Africans and African Americans made (and continue to re-make) American freedom through three fundamental components of nation building: the accumulation and control of capital (told through the slave trade, the plantation system, and empire building); the political turn towards democracy (from the Revolution through the reconstruction of the nation following the Civil War); and concepts of national belonging and exclusion (centered on the development of race-making). Within each, African Americans have innovated and pushed the nation forward to deepen its understanding of liberty, as Americans who lived through the fullest challenge to their freedom in almost every area of life from the most personal to the most public. Please join us in transcribing these documents to help uncover the stories of enslaved persons and their resilience, resistance, courage and faith.