INCITE receives funding from Russell Sage Foundation for Computational Social Science Project

INCITE has received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation for our initiative: Reclaiming Lost Data on American Racial Inequality, 1865-1940. The Russell Sage Foundation functions as the principal American foundation invested in the development of the social sciences. The foundation devotes itself to the strengthening of methods, data, and the theoretical core of the social sciences as a means for diagnosing social problems and addressing social issues.

INCITE’s Computational Social Science project: Reclaiming Lost Data on American Racial Inequality, 1865-1940 aims to produce a Big-Data genealogy of the African-American past by combining algorithmic linking techniques with historical and genealogical methods. To accomplish this, we will draw not just from census records, but also from idiosyncratic data sources, such as letters, marriages records, church registries and oral histories. Using these sources, we seek to document the effects of historical events and institutions on racial inequality in the United States.