MACON, Ga. — As Macon celebrates its 200th birthday this year, the city's history is remembered all over town.
The Tubman Museum, for one, is featuring a new exhibition in honor of the city's bicentennial celebration.
"The Enslaved People Project 1823 - 1865: Selected Records from Bibb County Superior Court Clerk, Erica L. Woodford, Esq., Clerk" displays how Black people were used as commodities during the 19th century.
It opened on July 1, and is open to the public until August 14, 2023.
What started out as an accidental discovery of documents recording slave transactions in Old Bibb County deed books in 2013 led to a decade-long collaboration of Mercer University and the Superior Court Clerk's Office.
"Superior Court Clerk Erica Woodford discovered records of slave transactions in old Bibb County deed books while conducting a routine inventory," said a press release.
It continues: "The 17 volumes, containing 6,000 pages of hand-written records, are located in the mezzanine level of records storage in the Superior Court Clerk's Office in the Bibb County Courthouse."
In side-by-side displays, the exact details of the slave transactions are described with a synopsis transcribing the recorded information.
"Usually, that kind of information gets lost over time," Museum Curator Jeffrey Bruce says. "Macon is unique, I think, in that we have preserved that history, and preserved that information, and the ability to make that part of public knowledge, or make that information available to the public is very unique and rare."
From physical descriptions to the value of the persons, the exhibition's documents show the buying and selling of slaves, the loaning and trading of people, and the use of Black bodies as collateral for loans.
The Tubman Museum will have a reception on Sunday, July 23rd at 3 p.m. that will celebrate the enslaved people project exhibit.
It will have with refreshments and special guests, including the discoverer, Ms. Woodford.
The reception is free for museum members and discounted at $5 tickets for general admission.