Assignments
Dividing Spaces, Dividing Races: Residential Segregation in Richmond,
Virginia (Web Project Proposal)
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The following websites served as models for my planning of Dividing
Spaces, Dividing Races:
Public History
Several sites created for general public audiences inspired the
section of my site devoted to public history. Among those include
A
More Perfect Union, which tells the story of Japanese-Americans
before, during, and after the Second World War. Using both Flash
and non-Flash modes, this site is a solid overview of the history
of Japanese immigrants and their descendants during their lives
in the U.S. I plan to the various Flash-animated storylines as a
model for the "General Introduction" of Dividing
Spaces.
Another site, Race
and Place: An African-American Community in the Jim Crow South,
is a "community study" that looks at life for African-American
in both urban and rural settings. Taking Charlottesville, Virginia,
as the focus of the study, Race and Place provides
visitors with abundant sources for studyign the life and times of
African-Americans in the early 20th century. The intimacy with which
viewers can see source material made me want to general a site similar
in content and focus. Community studies allow us to see historical
processes about the interaction between individuals and communities
in detail.
The
History of Jim Crow takes a look at the culture of Jim Crow
in the broadest sense by providing lengthly essays on the historical
origins and impacts of Jim Crow segregation. The site gives divisions
between the "History" and the "Geography" of
Jim Crow. In the History section, essays give visitors information
on the historical extent of segregation law. The "Geography"
section goes into more detail about the specifics of Jim Crow laws
in respective states. Instead of dividing "history" and
"geography" as this site does, I want to integrate the
two and show visitors to my site how important both are to understanding
the impact of segregation.
Education sites
As a site for educators, Race
and Place. In the words of the project's co-director, Dr. William
G. Thomas, Race and Place "makes available sources dealing
with segregation" especially useful for schools. Dr. Thomas
wanted to counter what he sees as an educational "black hole
for segregation". While the digital divide may be decreasing
technologically, Dr. Thomas feels that there is a "cultural"
divide regarding the materials available online. Among those scantly
available include resources that deal with African-Amercan communities
and their lives during segregation.
In DoHistory, I
found particularly useful the attempt to filter visitors via their
needs and blackgrounds. The site attempts to do this via a dropdown
menu that says "If you're interested in..." and lists
different facets of the site that may be appealing to different
users. Instead of listing multiple interests, I believe breaking
my site into three separate but related paths allows for a simple
but effective way to explore the site.
Scholarship/Digital Presentations
Created by an organization called Social Explorer, Histmaps
contains interactive maps in Flash and Javascript, as well as non-interactive
versions, that illustrate changes in populations based on race.
Looking at New York City and Los Angeles, Histmaps While the site
does not contain any other material related to the cities they analyze,
the maps themselves are a wonderful tool for learning about demographics
and the spatial representation of data. My site offers to combine
the values of dynamic maps with other primary source material to
explore the social, cultural, political, and economic facts of residential
segregation in an urban area.
A review of other websites that impacted my view of the scholarly
aspect of my site can be found in my digital essay entitled Historical
Scholarship on the Web.
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