I studied the “Digital Harlem” mapping project. The past maps of Harlem are used to explain everyday life of African Americans who lived around the area during 1915-1930. The maps are only supplemental material to provide evidence of narratives of the days, with each location points showing up as we click different criteria. The categories include churches, sports, numbers arrests, events, and nightlife.
As Turnbull stated, maps are necessarily made to be perspectival and subjective, since they reflect the point of views of people who created the map, through the selection or omission of information with certain purpose or interest in mind. The maps of Harlem do not represent all locations that existed during the time, but rather only the places that belong to the criteria are able to be viewed. The criteria obviously do not encompass every possible types of locations, but instead very limited, which are chosen by the creator of the mapping project. Also, the category of “events,” which function here as miscellaneous folder, include mostly negative events such as murder, arrest, blackmail, and burglary. By not having full access to all historical locations, we may make false assumptions of the people’s lives of the days. The maps are only selected to reveal negative and marginalized lives of African Americans, who were the most proportions of the residents at that time, and to obscure any possible movements that were ongoing among those people notwithstanding the political and financial marginalization that they had to face with. If the maps were supposed to provide complete narrative about the history and records, it should have included all locations as possible, with more diverse categories in both promoted and negative aspects. Also, it would have been more credible if related articles of the days were provided as a reference, with different point of views.
The image that we have developed nowadays for Harlem area may be the result of consecutive years of piled information through the research and data that were highlighted and displayed with the researchers and archivists having certain purpose in mind. What do we know about their purpose? Who are they? Can we still claim that the truth lies in data when the data were collected from others’, but not by our own hands? Will there ever be “the” truth?
You raise some interesting questions! In response to the last question, I think that one can try to provide as much context as possible in order to support their claim/data but it would be difficult to deem it as “the” truth due to the subjective analysis. For every datapoint included, I think there is an equal amount of information that is not included yet essential in order for the general public to form their own opinions on the subject/topic.
I agree with Wendy. Very interesting questions to consider. I also agree that this map did highlight only negative aspects of when happened in Harlem- which was confusing because they were targeting everyday lives of African Americans.