PROPOSAL TYPE
Roundtable
SEEKING
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking Specific Expertise
RELATED TOPICS
- Digital
- Memory
- Place
- Public Engagement
ABSTRACT
Plantation landscapes have been scrutinized by public historians, who have curated the lives of white slave-owners and enslaved Black laborers who called these landscapes home. Similarly, Black towns and urban neighborhoods built after emancipation have been studied as part of the Great Migration, with historic districts and tours commemorating their importance. But Reconstruction-era settlements built in rural areas by emancipated Blacks remain largely unexplored. They provide a counter-narrative to the Great Migration, testifying to the perseverance of rural Blacks who claimed space in the face of white oppression. We are documenting Virginia freetowns using ArcGIS and StoryMaps. How do we engage and serve the public with these histories?
DESCRIPTION
Our current project (details here) will produce an annotated ArcGIS map of about 60 freetowns in four central Virginia counties by the time the grant ends in April 2023. Sites mapped include settlements, churches, cemeteries, schools, fraternal lodges, businesses, and land. We are spatializing several different types of data, including property tax records, census data, deeds, and property tax records, which we are integrating with historical images, maps, media reports, newspaper accounts, oral histories, and other historical and geographic information to create richly annotated public-facing maps. Our project creates a digital spatial container for documenting these settlements that could become a template for other projects seeking to do the same thing in other locations; likewise the StoryMaps we’re creating about individual freetowns. It will all be freely and publicly available. We have several community partners and participants, who are connecting us with descendants of freetown residents and other local history-keepers. But we are very aware that many digital humanities projects gather dust after they’re completed, or their funding runs out, and we want to do as much as possible to make sure our freetowns project doesn’t meet that fate. To that end, we seek the following:
• Panelists from a range of scholarly and professional conversations this project might inform.
• Critiques of the project as public history. Where do digital projects like this fit into public history, broadly conceived?
• Ideas for spreading the word about our digital project. How do we make the project discoverable and accessible?
• Critiques grounded in the work of Black geographers, sociologists, and ethnographers such as Karla Slocum (Black Towns, Black Futures), Marcus Anthony Hunter and Zandria F. Robinson (Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life), and Elijah Anderson (The Cosmopolitan Canopy).
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Lisa Goff, University of Virginia, [email protected]
ALL FEEDBACK AND OFFERS OF ASSISTANCE SHOULD BE SUBMITTED BY JULY 7, 2022. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
Lisa,
This is a very intriguing and strong topic. As someone who studies Black laborers and craftspeople, many of whom have descendants undoubtedly peppered throughout these Reconstruction era settlements. Presentations such as this are best suited for a multi-model deliverance guiding your attendees through the visual and cultural journey of your research.
Comments on your four prescribed outlets for this presentation:
1) I suggest an even panel of public historians, descendants (if applicable), your ArcGIS specialist, and an historian who covers the landscape, time period.
2) Traditionally, projects such as this have been nestled within Digital History. However, this project examines the life, and culture of African Americans on the southern landscape and in as much covers a much wider audience. Digital history is the main vessel of deliverance both in research and visually, however this project also touches historic preservation, and material culture.
3) You must become apart of as many conversations as possible where elements of your project are found. Social media, in particular Instagram, is almost a must in our digitally minded age.
Torren, thank you so much for this thoughtful feedback!
-Lisa