The Emory 1836 Project is a dynamic digital humanities website, created by students in the Reparative History at Emory course, that re-centers the university’s origins within the historical context of the forced deportation of the Muscogee and Cherokee peoples from Georgia and the national expansion of slavery. Student archival research, place-based study, ethnographic research, and community storytelling for the Emory 1836 Project investigate how the legacies of slavery and dispossession structured institutional culture and practices from the university’s founding through the present-day. This reparative history project recognizes the active presence and contributions of Black and Indigenous peoples throughout Emory University’s history. The project is a living document that will expand as other students add to it in future semesters.

Check out the website for stories, archival documents, interview clips, and maps of significant events in the history of Emory’s main campus and Oxford campus.

This project was a product of the HIST-488RW/AMST-489: Reparative History at Emory course taught in Spring 2023 by Dr. Michael Mortimer.