This paper investigates the authors’ collaboration with undergraduate students at Salem State University in data curation and visualization. It asserts that data-driven strategies in African diaspora digital humanities can improve data literacy and foster equity, despite the obstacles encountered. The authors describe their research journey, including creating a dataset from archival and secondary sources and devising visualizations. They emphasize their challenges, such as the scarcity of archival materials and the need to modify the project’s initial objectives.