Before Hall's database, most historians believed there was little information on Africans who were held as slaves during the colonial era throughout most of the 20th century; their origins and even many of their names were believed to have been forgotten. However, Hall proved otherwise. She took it upon herself to find not just names, but details like skills and personality traits of enslaved Africans brought to Louisiana in the 18th century in the poorly kept dusty records in a rural courthouse in southern Louisana. She took seven years to complete the historic database after starting in 1993 not just from records in Louisana but also in government libraries in Madrid and Paris. She told The New York Times in 2000, "I'm hoping this database will help smooth the path for others to make Africans concrete as human beings." "Someday, people will be asking this database questions that I can't even imagine right now."
One of the most major works of Hall besides the database is the book titled "Africans in Colonial Louisiana." The book talks about the development of Afro-Creole culture in the region during the 18th century. According to retired Tulane University history professor Lawrence Powell, the book is "indispensable," because it demonstrates both the African ethnic groups that the enslaved people originated from as well as the methods in which they adapted to their new environments, according to NOLA.com.
Powell told the outlet, "You cannot write the history of Louisiana or the South without reference to that book and the trails she blazed. It shows how [slaves] coexisted and created a culture across language barriers. It’s a story of displaced people under pretty grueling conditions and how essential they were to the creation of New Orleans."
Remembering Dr. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, her civil rights work, and her landmark scholarship in recovering the identities of more than 100,000 enslaved people. https://t.co/3wrjKuQ0Ro
— Center for Civil Rights History & Research (@UofSCCRC) September 12, 2022
Ned Sublette, a longtime friend of Hall, said that documenting the oppression of slavery was "the animating passion of Gwen’s life." Hall wrote in the preface of her 2021 memoir titled, "Haunted by Slavery: A Southern White Woman in the Freedom Struggle, " that she wanted her scholarship to showcase, "the story of the oppressed, wherever they are from, not only as victims but as people in a constant state of struggle and creation."
Alles Gwendolyn Mildo Hall at Whitney Plantation, which was created in her honor, has two L-shaped walls bearing the name of 107,000 people in her database. Ibrahima Seck, research director at Whitney Plantation, said that her ashes will also be placed in the hall to honor her work and contribution.
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, a historian of colonial-era Louisiana, has died at 93. After years of digging through obscure libraries, she rescued the identities of more than 100,000 enslaved people from archival oblivion. https://t.co/h6iw1Vo0dX
— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 12, 2022
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