slave names no longer forgotten

The Virginia Historical Society has a website that brings together many documents from the antebellum period of American history so that you can search for the names of African Americans who might otherwise be lost to history. From the website:

This database is the latest step by the Virginia Historical Society to increase access to its varied collections relating to Virginians of African descent. Since its founding in 1831, the VHS has collected unpublished manuscripts, a collection that now numbers more than 8 million processed items.

Within these documents are numerous accounts that collectively help tell the stories of African Americans who have lived in the state over the centuries. Our first effort to improve access to these stories came in 1995 with publication of our Guide to African American Manuscripts. A second edition appeared in 2002, and the online version is continually updated as new sources enter our catalog (http://www.vahistorical.org/aamcvhs/guide_intro.htm).

The next step we envisioned would be to create a database of the names of all the enslaved Virginians that appear in our unpublished documents. Thanks to a generous grant from Dominion Resources and the Dominion Foundation in January 2011, we launched the project that has resulted in this online resource. Named Unknown No Longer, the database seeks to lift from the obscurity of unpublished historical records as much biographical detail as remains of the enslaved Virginians named in those documents. In some cases there may only be a name on a list; in others more details survive, including family relationships, occupations, and life dates.

Check it out.

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driverless cars and the end of death

In my course in introductory sociology, I have a module on health. One lecture describes the leading causes death, across age groups and across time periods. In modern times, one of the leading causes of death is “unintentional injury.” What does that mean? Roughly speaking, the three major categories of unintentional injury death are, in order, falling, auto accidents, and accidental poisoning.

The interesting thing is that these are all types of death that relate to economic development: cars, chemical, tall buildings, stairs and so forth. The other side is that economic development can also help us out. For example, in about one generation, driverless cars will be widespread. The implication is that drunk driving will be eliminated over night and accidents relating to drifting driver attention will disappear overnight. Truck accidents should also disappear. My hypothesis is that computer driven cars will probably be better than most people when they drive in the rain or snow. They might even automatically shut down if conditions are bad enough.

Bottom line: Economic development has unintended consequences. Sometimes they are bad, such as auto related deaths. But development can introduce solutions. The driverless car will be one such example.

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