IOPN is excited to announce the publication of Enrolling as Cherokee Freedmen: Social Networks of Rejected Applicants by Hai In Jo. This publication began with researching archival materials in the Cherokee Freedman Collection at Texas A&M’s Cushing Memorial Library and Archives, and grew into a project that sought to examine and highlight the racial marginalization of Black residents in the Cherokee census rolls.
“Enrolling as Cherokee Freedmen: Social Networks of Rejected Applicants began as a serendipitous discovery in my institution’s archive, which surprised me for my ignorance of the history of Cherokee Freedmen–Black people formerly enslaved by the Cherokees, and their descendants–and for finding the archival structure misleading to some degree. Digging into the documents, I was also shocked by the way that a Black woman’s voice was silenced within the archival gap. My digital publication highlights the lives of Black individuals who applied for Cherokee citizenship but were denied under a bureaucratic system deeply embedded in racial dynamics between the “red, black, and white” people. Cherokee Freedmen faced marginalization in both the Cherokee Nation and the United States, while the rejected Black lives have been entirely forgotten and dismissed.”—Hai In Jo, Project Author
Hai In Jo’s publication uses a variety of digital tools to explore the lives of the Black individuals applying to be formally enrolled as Cherokee Freedmen, including network visualizations demonstrating the connections between various Cherokee Freedmen applicants, recognized Freedmen, and Cherokees; image annotations; and timelines using archival evidence to trace the lives of Cherokee Freedmen and to highlight their attempts to gain full citizenship rights in the Cherokee Nation. In so doing, Jo is able to enhance our perspective on the lives of Black people applying for Cherokee citizenship in the late 19th century to early 20th century and brings their stories—silenced and marginalized from history—to light.
“This work is significant because it employs digital tools to bring forth these nearly absent figures by tracing both the linear histories of Cherokee Freedmen and Black individuals denied Cherokee citizenship, as well as visualizing their social networks in a non-hierarchical manner. I hope the readers will see how these relational networks create a richer, more dynamic narrative that counters the silencing of the Black individuals’ voices and effectively maps their lives, otherwise omitted from official census rolls. Through their social bonds, the rejected applicants transcend the “social death” often associated with enslavement, demonstrating that they were never truly isolated, even in captivity.” —Hai In Jo
This work is a digital humanities project that was developed as part of a collaboration with the History of Black Writing’s Black Book Interactive Project (BBIP) Digital Publishing Scholars Program, an NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, and African American Studies Publishing Without Walls 2 (AFRO-PWW 2) at the University of Illinois, funded by the Mellon Foundation. AFRO-PWW 2 collaborates with Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Black Studies scholars at PWIs, and community-based memory institutions to produce open-source digital publications that document Black lives and experiences.
Enrolling as Cherokee Freedmen: Social Networks of Rejected Applicants is published by IOPN under the Publishing Without Walls imprint’s Black Studies series in Spring 2025.