Department of History   NewsRelease

UNCG HISTORIAN RECEIVES NEW GRANT
TO CONTINUE SLAVERY RESEARCH

GREENSBORO--Dr. Loren Schweninger, a professor of history at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, has received a grant of $25,464 from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to continue his slavery research.

Schweninger’s project is titled "Race,  Slavery and Free Blacks: Petitions to Southern Legislatures and County Courts, 1776-1867.” For his research, Schweninger collected copies of more than 17,000 old court records dating from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. The documents involve legal transactions concerning slaves and provide detailed information on slavery and the economic and cultural systems of plantations in Southern states.

The new grant will enable Schweninger to further organize and edit the vast amount of data. At present, he has edited the first of two volumes, which include approximately 125 petitions in a letterpress volume by the University of Illinois Press. Approximately 3,000 of the petitions have been microfilmed and released by University Publications of America. Schweninger's project is making the documents available online to historians for additional research. He visited archives and courthouses in 15 Southern states to collect the documents, most of which were sealed up, covered in dust and had not been seen or used for many years.

A specialist in American and African-American history, Schweninger has written several books on the topic, including "Black Property Owners in the South, 1790-1915," which received the Rudwick Award from the University of Illinois Press. With historian Dr. John Hope Franklin, he wrote the book, "Plantation Rebels: Runaway Slaves, 1790-1860," which was published by Oxford Press.

A UNCG faculty member since 1971, he holds the Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago. He has served on the N.C. State Historical Records Advisory Board. His slavery research has received national exposure in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, New York Times and in numerous other newspapers through articles that were circulated nationally by the Associated Press and the New York Times.

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