The Thomas Day Education Project (TDEP) was established by Laurel and Charles Sneed to address the lack of educational media and materials on African-American historical subjects in the public schools in NC.

Research conducted by Laurel Sneed and Christine Westfall discovered Thomas Day’s origins in southern Virginia and identified his parents and brother. The lead scholar/advisor of this research was Dr. John Hope Franklin (1915-2009), eminent historian of the African-American experience and at the time a professor of history at Duke University. Dr. Franklin mentored Laurel Sneed while advising the Thomas Day origins research project and made her aware that TDEP was urgently needed to address the widespread lack of knowledge among Americans of the experience of slavery and the role race has played in our nation’s history. (See: Sneed, Laurel C. and Christine Westfall, “Uncovering the Hidden History of Thomas Day: Findings and Methodology, a Report to the North Carolina Humanities Council,” Durham, NC: Thomas Day Education Project, 1995).

Patricia Dane Roger’s article on Thomas Day was published in the Washington Post. This was the first time an article on Thomas Day appeared in a major national newspaper and marked the beginning of Rogers’ two decades-long research of Thomas Day’s social and political history.

The TDEP received its first National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to conduct a series of teacher workshops on African–American history with 100 teachers from three NC school systems.

Janie Leigh Carter’s research on Rev. John Day Jr., Thomas Day’s brother and a founder of the nation of Liberia in West Africa, was completed for her MA’ thesis at Wake Forest University. (See: Carter, Janie Leigh, “John Day: A Founder of the Republic of Liberia and the Southern Baptist Liberian Missionary Movement in the 19th Century,” Master’s Thesis, Wake Forest University 1998.)

Jonathan Prown, an eminent furniture historian and expert on Southern furniture, wrote a pivotal article that reassessed previously held assumptions about Thomas Day’s furniture. (See: Prown, Jonathan,”The Furniture of Thomas Day: A Reevaluation,” Winterthur Portfolio, 33, no. 4

A national press conference to “kick-off” the NEH’s Landmarks of American History and Culture workshops was held at the NC Museum of History. The NEH chairperson and several NEH division directors were in attendance at the press conference. The “Crafting Freedom” workshop was featured as a model NEH Landmarks workshop.

The Apprend Foundation, Inc. was approved by the IRS as a 501-c3 tax exempt organization and thereby formally established to be a stand-alone organization to continue to pursue grants and the work that had been initiated by TDEP.

The Crafting Freedom Materials Project (see: www.craftingfreedom.org), an intensive, multi-year instructional development and media production project, was funded by the NEH. It is a web-based digitized collection of original classroom-tested and scholar-vetted lesson plans featuring teacher guidance and extensive instructional media and materials about twelve 19th century African American artists, entrepreneurs, and abolitionists.

The Crafting Freedom Materials Project was uploaded to the worldwide web and made freely available to teachers and their students.

Crafting Freedom workshops were cited in an NEH blog targeting Congress for being an exemplary NEH-supported project. See: Crafting Freedom: Black Artisans, Entrepreneurs, and Abolitionists of the Antebellum Upper South

Selected Crafting Freedom Materials’ lesson plans are funded to be modified for the EdSitement website.

Apprend received funding to develop educational material for NEH’s EdSitement Website to support the Academy Award winning film “Twelve Years a Slave” based on the slave narrative of the same name by Solomon Northup. EdSitement is an NEH–supported repository of outstanding educational media and materials.

The Crafting Freedom workshops resumed in 2011 and 300 educators from around the nation participated in this professional development during this period.