This project informed me mostly of the ability to see the intricacies of the past. Little stories that the American Guide Series authors chose to include and some bigger stories that I never knew has such a great effect on the rest of the state or country. I was very intrigued to know more about Massachusetts. I picked the state simply because I knew it had a deep history and that there are still many things to see there. Even though I picked a region of Massachusetts that was largely residential, it still presented crucial implications about the state. Also, I really loved to see how many of the artifacts that I found still exist today. To me, the 1930s were a completely different time than 2019 in many ways so, it’s very interesting to see how they’ve remained successful, changed shape, and still apply today. Spatial mapping can show us the frequencies of what people considered interesting in the 1930s. The creators of each guide were specific in what they chose each time to include. If they were trying to be as accurate as possible,
1I wonder if there are any things that they didn’t include that are now successful that may have just been starting when they created the guide?
Against my Green Book map, there were no locations on their map in the area I was studying. Instead of trying to make something show up, I felt like this showed more than a different map could. I did not think of the demographic that was living in the residential area of Massachusetts as any specific race but, its apparent that it was largely white if there were no safe places for black people just a couple of years later. All of the stories I learned and were so interested in had suddenly turned grey in my mind because all people couldn’t take part in them.
2In a racially unwelcoming place, the past became clearer than before because now I could see not only the stories that happened but the people that got to tell them. To be clear, I still like the artifacts I found and the implications of industrialism in the surrounding areas but now, there’s a new vision of what the towns looked like and how it treated others.
- Utah State University. “The American Guide Series: American Culture Defined: The American Guide Series.” Digital Exhibits, USU Digital Exhibits, Omeka, 2019, exhibits.usu.edu/exhibits/show/americanguideseries/americanguideseries.
- Artale, Vincent S. “Mapping Racism And Assessing the Success of the Digital Humanities.” History From Below, WordPress, 20 Oct. 2017, sarahemilybond.com/2017/10/20/mapping-racism-and-assessing-the-success-of-the-digital-humanities/.
