by Jeffrey Ghannam

About the author: Jeffrey Ghannam is a legal affairs writer for the ABA Journal, the monthly publication of the American Bar Association.

For years, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall pored over handwritten French, Spanish and English slave documents in a massive effort to document Afro-Louisiana history.

With stunning authority, she untangled a history of African slave names, genders, ages, occupations, illnesses, family relationships, ethnicity, places of origin, prices paid by slave owners, slaves' testimony and emancipations. A few mouse clicks provide computer access to the product of Hall's work, Databases for the Study of Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy 1699-1860. The CD-ROM from Louisiana State University Press, which she edited, offers insight into the inhumanity of slavery.

"Look, this is unique and it shows which masters owned which slaves and...