For this week’s blog, I decided to pick the Digital Harlem project and its use of mapping. The project is based upon the everyday lives of the African Americans in Harlem, New York in the period from 1915-1930. Most people know about Harlem from the Harlem renaissance, which was an important movement in the United states for the culture through social and artistic work. When people hear about Harlem, they only think about the important African American figures such as artists, poets or musicians. This project focused on the regular African American lives in this period. The project was put together using the W.P.A. (Writers Program Collection), the committee of fourteen papers, black newspapers and legal documentation from the district attorney’s closed case files and the probation department case files.
When you open the page, it can be a bit overwhelming especially for those who are not familiar with the city at all. It highlights the growth of the community which was fully black (with African Americans & West Indian immigrants) by marking boundaries for the years 1920, 1925, and 1930. When you zoom in closely, the map goes into further detail of the buildings such as floors and material it is made of. You can choose from multiple event based maps which are churches, number of arrests, nightlife, sports and January 1025. The legend The legend labels all types of event, people and places.
Like Turnbull states all maps are perspective and subjective and that is certainly the case for this one. it doesn’t really have any sense of direction. You have to click around on your own and sort of make your own story out of it. There is no sense of direction but your own. For me, the only insight I had to the map was a small knowledge of Harlem from history classes where I had learned a bit about the Harlem Renaissance. Other than that I had no sense of knowledge about the city especially the demographics, streets, or locations in the city. I didn’t know where to start or what spots are more significance. If the map could have an alternative, I would suggest a map that could put you through a certain order of events either by highlighting the more significant ones or something of that nature. It would also be cool to put you through a order of events in a persons life where you follow a timeline from their birth to death or along those lines. The timeline of events could just be still from this period a line of their life in Harlem from 1915-1930. This line like a a set of plots connected by a line. This would give me more understanding of the life of everyday (regular) black people in Harlem at this time.