Nathaniel Smith – The Digital Past Course Blog

Hopeless Times and Dreams of Flight

When I first began this project, I was nervous to say the least. I had an idea of the subject that I wished to study; however, I was unsure as to weather or not a historical theme would emerge from my research. Having completed my project, I am glad to say that I managed to find that topic – the American spirit.

I recognize that this is a broad topic of study, but it the Great Depression provides an excellent look into what the American spirit actually is and not what our history textbooks and wartime propaganda campaigns have made it out to be. I believe that my grandfather, Robert W. Smith said it best: The American spirit is the sum of all who have gone before in this great nation.

In Hopeless Times and Dreams of Flight, I attempt to unravel the mysteries of the American spirit through an examination of primary source interviews, the life history of Oscar Winchell, and a glitched image of a man and boy inspecting an aircraft. These three small collections of evidence have led me to conclude that the American spirit is a combination of individual ingenuity motivated by dreams for the benefit of a nation.

In the first portion of my final project, I employed Voyant Tools to develop a better understanding of how pilots managed to propel themselves into the skies during the Great Depression. I was inspired by Lauren Tilton’s article Race and Place: Dialect and the Construction of Southern Identity in the Ex-Slave Narratives. In her project, Tilton drew conclusions from distant readings of ex-slave narratives collected by the Federal Writer’s Project to understand how dialect segregated African Americans.¹

From my own distant readings, I found that the individual drives of pilots brought them to the skies. Although they faced many difficulties, aviators during the Great Depression Era continued to live out their dreams of flight.

In the next portion of my project, I created a Story Map using Knight Lab’s StoryMapJS program. In her article Mapping Racism and Assessing the Success of the Digital Humanities, Sarah Bond argues that maps allow the public to easily access critical information regarding important subjects such as segregation.²

In my own project, I map the life of famed pilot Oscar Winchell and his many adventures. What I drew from this history is that although he was a superb aviator, Winchell was unable to control for many outside forces. In order to survive his flights, Winchell would often have to rely on the aid of others in order to survive. Only through a unified dedication to a cause could Winchell have managed his success.

For the final portion of my project, I created a glitched image of a man and a boy standing next to an airplane. I was motivated to create this image by Michael Kramer’s article Glitching History: Using Image Deformities to Rethink Agency and Authenticity in the 1960s American Folk Music Revival. In this piece, Kramer argues that historians can draw valuable information from images that have been tampered with and draw inspiration for new conclusions about previously discussed historical subjects.³

From my glitched image, I concluded that only through the guidance of President Roosevelt’s administration could the American people have overcome the crisis that was the Great Depression. Individual ingenuity has its limits, and overwhelming challenges require the employment of many different skills and talents in order to be met.

So, what exactly is the American spirit? The answer that I found through this project is that it cannot be captured in a simple, one-line sentence but, rather, is a mosaic of many different talents and abilities that have come together to achieve a greater cause.

The Federal One Project is described in an excerpt from Kenneth Binda’s book All This Music Belongs to the Nation: The WPA’s Federal Music Project and American Society as a coming together of many talented individuals to alleviate the unemployment crisis of the Great Depression.⁴

Pilots who flew during the Great Depression teach us that although one may have individual abilities, those talents are likely to be forgotten if not put to a higher purpose. The reason we remember President Roosevelt is not simply because of his time in office but because of what he did during that time. He dared to use the federal government to provide relief to the American people and brought his vision to life to lead the nation out of a crisis. Our nation is teeming with men and women just like Roosevelt, all that we must do is tap into this resource.

Zora Neale Hurston and Creating Folk Music

Earlier in the semester, our class discussed the collection of folk music by Alan Lomax during the Great Depression. However, how folk music was created was a question that was neither answered nor explored.

While browsing the Library of Congress’ database, I encountered a song entitled, “Wake Up, Jacob,” composed by Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston explains that work camps were awoken to the singing of the camp’s crier. These compositions were original; however, it is likely that they incorporated music sung by one’s family or community.

Additional elements of the song were inspired by these songs’ purposes. “Wake Up, Jacob” incorporates the knocking of one’s hand against a hard surface. This knocking is meant to mirror the rapping of one’s hand against the lodgings where members of the work camp were sleeping.

In “Ballad for Americans,” an article produced by the website Radio Diaries⁵, the origins of this popular song are discussed. It was composed by a gay man and popularized by a black man but adopted by all Americans as an anthem of national unity. When considered alongside “Wake Up, Jacob,” a song that incorporated musical elements from slave communities, the origins of most folk music becomes irrelevant. Instead, the music’s use in uniting people under a common banner becomes that of central importance, as we can see by the songs sung in work camps across the country.

Additionally, we should consider folk music to be a part of a region’s history. In Digital Exhibit’s article, “The American Guide Series,” there is no mention of music sung by a state’s inhabitants.⁶ This is discouraging, as the songs a people sings speak volumes of their beliefs and values. Although one may visit a state and its monuments, one cannot fully understand a people without knowing of their music.

Folk music is not a narrow category of music. It is the incorporation of culture and new surroundings and unites all of those who listen it – folk music is the music of the people.

Omaha: For God and Country

Although high school to many of us may seem like a far off dream, I remember my time in secondary school very well thanks to one man – Mr. Stulac. My Latin teacher was very proud of the places he had lived. One of these places was Nebraska. I would often tease him for his pride in inhabiting in such a strange place, but Mr. Stulac informed me that this state surface-level appearance by no means compared to the wonderful of this state.

For this project, I wanted to test my high school Latin teacher’s beliefs. Is Nebraska, the “cornhusker state”, really as remarkable as he claimed?

For this project I examined Tour 1A. Omaha-Bellevue in the WPA’s Nebraska: The Cornhusker State. A majority of the sites listed in this tour pertained to the area’s natural landscape, missionary practices, and governmental history. Considering these landmarks through the eyes of an American living in the 21st century, it’s difficult to understand the significance of these places. However, when perceived through the eyes of an American living during the Great Depression, these sites take on a new meaning.

With regards to the area’s natural wonders, many Americans during the 1930s sought to assign new value in their culture and have it hold its own against those of Europe. As is explained in American Culture Defined: The American Guide Series¹, Americans valued their landscapes as works comparable to those created in Europe. This was a bold endeavor, but one which has benefited our nation’s National Parks Services, from Yosemite to the small Fontenelle Forest in Bellevue, Nebraska.

Additionally, the WPA’s Nebraska: A Guide to the Cornhusker State provides readers with information on road conditions and means of transportation around the city. This information is significant, as it encouraged tourists to travel across the state as individuals through the use of the automobile. This sense of empowerment given to the average American was much needed during the hopeless time of the Great Depression.

However, this does not mean that the WPA’s guide series empowered all Americans. For African Americans living during the time of Jim Crow, travel was a daunting task: Where will my family rest safely at night? Where can I find my family a decent meal? These questions plagued African Americans considering a tour of their own nation, and the answers were bleak. The map below shows the places an African American’s business would have been accepted on a journey from Lincoln to Omaha.

As we can see, the options were scarce, and African Americans were excluded from this opportunity provided by the Roosevelt Administration. In Sarah Bond’s article “Mapping Racism and Assessing the Success of the Digital Humanities,”[enf_note] https://sarahemilybond.com/2017/10/20/mapping-racism-and-assessing-the-success-of-the-digital-humanities/[/enf_note] mapping projects such as the Navigating the Green Book provide audiences with a clear image of the presence of discrimination. What could be more frightening than the insecurity of one’s safety.

Ultimately, I believe that Mr. Stulac was right in saying that Nebraska was an interesting place to live. Behind the stern face of the cornhusker lies a past filled with American nationalism and racial bigotry.

Archiving the FTP

Instead of holding a lecture at our normally assigned meeting place, last Wednesday our class had the opportunity to visit the Special Collections Research Center located at Fenwick Library and study firsthand a number of artifacts within this collection.

When our class began, we were introduced to the the collection’s research services coordinator Brittney Falter. During her presentation, Falter provided our class with information on archives (the locations where permanent records are held), archivists (those responsible for organizing, maintaining, and digitizing artifacts), and the politics that surrounds archiving records and artifacts.

Falter, informed our class that archivists hold priorities for archiving and maintaining artifacts. She stated that those artifacts of greatest priority are those which are deteriorating but these artifacts (although of great importance) may be given lesser priority based on outside factors. These factors include the ambitions of well-known or influential donors and the donations that they provide to the collection.

Prior to this event, our class was asked to read several articles pertaining to the subject of archiving. In an interview between Thomas Padilla and Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez entitled “Bias, Perception, and Archival Praxis,” the two discuss the biases that exist within archives. Arroyo-Ramirez informs Padilla that much of the bias that archivists struggle with is their own (much of which has developed from their own Western culture)⁷. To help eliminate this bias, Arroyo-Ramirez suggests that archivists must learn to recognize their own biases and work to eliminate them from their work.

The artifacts that our class examined during our class period were from the FTP. Our small group examined flyers for a production of Hamlet that was performed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1939. It was interesting to consider the effects of digitizing these artifacts, as some flyers contained notes that were not present on others. Our small group wondered what information would be lost had only one of these flyers been digitized.

In her article “The Artifactual Elements of Born-Digital Records, Part 1” Susan Manu states that some of the appeal of artifacts is viewing them from our own time period.⁸ In the case of our small group’s flyers, I wonder how an archivist would go about archiving the large, digital displays advertising performances in Times Square.

Our class visit to the Special Collections Research Center was a wonderful experience. Seeing these artifacts in person and analyzing them gave me a unique perspective into the work that archivists perform and the challenges that they face.

Aviation & the Great Depression

On our first lecture day, Professor Dauterive informed our class that we would be given the freedom to study whatever subject interested us, so long as it was done within the context of the 1930s and the Great Depression. Upon hearing this news, my mind immediately began to race to find a subject that fascinated me, and I was quick to discover it – aviation.

For this assignment, I decided to explore the world of aviation during the Great Depression and ask myself the following questions: What impediments were there to pilots during this time period, and how did pilots manage to find employment in the face of these obstacles?

To answer these questions, I began by first deciding upon my corpus. Because the subject of aviation is relatively niche, I thought it best to employ all of the documents uploaded by our class and available in our course’s Dropbox. Following this, I began to search for words related to aviation such as flying and pilot and reading excerpts from the texts in which they were found.

In her essay, Race and Place: Dialect and the Construction of Southern Identity in the Ex-Slave Narratives, Lauren Tilton used topic modeling – the categorizing of words based on their frequent associations with one another – to begin asking questions about common topics within the Ex-Slave Narratives.¹ Because I did not have access to a topic modeling program, I had to do categorize my subjects manually.

After reading reading through a number of these excerpts, I was able to determine a number of terms that were commonly associated with aviation during this time period such as teaching, stunt, passenger, and mail. After obtaining these key words, I inserted them into a table to see if I had missed any texts that relate to careers in aviation and its problems.

Having finished this process, I was able to come to several conclusions concerning my initial research questions. To answer my first question, I found that maintaining an airplane for personal use was quite an expensive undertaking, and with the start of the Great Depression, people had less time to fly as a recreation. Additionally, the construction of airports was halted by many communities who feared planes that planes would malfunction and crash into their homes and businesses.

However, there were some occupations which pilots could hold during this period. The most common were serving as a mail carriers, passenger pilots, and flight instructors. The least common job that a pilot held was as a stuntman.

Although this project required a number of days to complete, the task would have been nearly impossible without Voyant Tools. Because this application allowed me to search for key words across my entire corpus and read closely texts relating to my subject of interest, I was able to not only learn about a subject that interested me but do it within a reasonable time frame.

Although it is by no means a past time of mine, I have always enjoyed listening to interviews. When I first discovered the YouTube channel Blank on Blank during my sophomore year of high school, I distinctly remember listening to each interview available on the channel without pause. It’s difficult to describe, but hearing authors, politicians, and other well-known figures discuss their works and experiences using their own voices was strangely fascinating to me. So, when this assignment was announced, I was elated.

The subject of my interview was the cowboy, bounty hunter, and former slave, Charlie Smith. In his interview with Elmer E. Sparks, Smith describes his passage from Liberia, Africa to the United States as well as his upbringing. He states that his family was tricked by slave traders who had landed in his country and brought by these men to New Orleans, Louisiana. Upon arriving in the United States, Smith was purchased by a wealthy cattle rancher named Charlie Smith, who Smith describes as raising him as though he were his own child (even going so far as to give Smith his own name). On his owner’s ranch, Smith was the sole black cowboy and, following his owner’s death, Smith was granted his freedom.

Throughout his interview with Sparks, Smith does not spend a great deal of time focusing on his enslavement. Instead, he chooses to focus on his many achievements within the United States, including his involvement in the killing of the notorious Billy the Kid and the capture of Charles J. Guiteau. Although this interview is categorized as an interview by a former slave, one would find it difficult to note this had he or she only listened to two thirds of the interview. In Smith’s case, his previous enslavement did not impede his capacity to achieve. However, Smith does note among his numerous accomplishments that he was truly proud of lending his aid in the tearing down of a sign in Oxford, Mississippi that prevented blacks from entering onto a piece of property.

As stated previously, Smith does not seem to have let his former enslavement withhold him achieving; however, the prideful tone with which he notes his achievements indicates that they were not only small feats, but ones which seemed almost impossible for a black man to have accomplished during his day and age.

The power that interviews hold is not the content of their speech, but the subtle intonations that characterize them and their meanings for the speaker. In the case of Smith, he is certainly proud of what he has managed to achieve in this country, but this interview allows audiences to understand the source of that pride – that an uneducated, former slave made an impact in this nation’s history. A history that is scarred by its history of enslaving men and women just like Smith.

Biased Algorithms

Throughout the years, I have become interested in a variety of different topics. And whenever these interests compels me to begin some form of research, whether it be for a blog or for my own writings, my first step is always to create a new Google Account. Although I recognize that this may be perceived by some as a strange practice, I find that having these separate accounts allows for the information pertaining to my subject of interest to be neatly categorized and to not be lost in the seemingly endless sea of content that I browse through daily.

Some of you may be asking yourselves, “why would one bring up his or her numerous Google Accounts in blog post about Algorithms?” The answer is simple. Because I am constantly creating new Google Accounts pertaining to a single topic, these new accounts are not influenced by previous searches made on the same account. What this means is that I Interact with Google’s search algorithm – tailored to new users – on the daily. Therefore, I can make the safe assumption that the results I receive on these accounts are influenced solely by Google’s search algorithm.

When beginning my research on motorcycle racing for my blog dedicated to the subject, I began by searching the phrase, ‘motorcycle racing’ using Google’s search algorithm. My results did not yield information on individual racers or the most recent racing events but the Cycle World news page. While this website contained brief snippets of information pertaining to cyclists and racing events, its focus was fixed ont he motorcycles being produced by companies such as Kawasaki and Honda. Where were the links to Instagram accounts of cyclists? Where were the photographs of these cyclists on the circuit?

In her essay, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, Safiya Noble states that Google’s search algorithm yields results that favor particular organizations based on their monetary influence. Although I cannot state with impunity that Cycle World has given exorbitant amounts of funds to Google for their place on the top of my search results, their connections with different motorcycle production companies and racing events – both high grossing industries – leads me to believe that they are in the position to reinforce their standing.

However, this problem seems not only to affect racing fans but historians and students as well. When the phrase, ‘Civil Rights Movement’ is searched using Google’s search algorithm, only a text box containing general historical information on the subject appears. To make matters worse, the information provided states that the Civil Rights Movement took place starting in the 1950s and ended in the 1960s. However, this movement began as early as the 1930s during FDR’s New Deal Administration and has continued even to this day.

These examples should remind us that the results we receive using Google’s search algorithm are not always the most reliable – they are not even unbiased. We must rely on ourselves, the users, to find credible, relevant information on our subjects.

Divided Focus

When beginning this project, I spent a great deal of time browsing the numerous photographs available through the Library of Congress’ collection of images produced by the New Deal’s Farm Security Administration. Although I did not have a particular subject in mind at the start of this project, I soon found myself skimming through photographs documenting the works of the Tennessee Valley Authority. I was initially drawn towards the aesthetics of early 20th century machinery captured in these images but later found a greater amount of pleasure in a photograph capturing a young man tightening a nut at the T.V.A.’s Watts Bar Dam.

In this image, the young man has on his face a look of both determination and satisfaction. While his task is simple – tightening a nut – he appears to do it with great energy and is fulfilled by his work. I believe this image to be an excellent demonstration of the energy that propelled this nation out of the Great Depression. This young man, like so many other workers at the time, is driven to repair his broken nation through his own grit. Tightening a single nut on a single guide vane would not ensure the stability of the dam, but neither would one person being employed solve the economic collapse of the Great Depression. Only through a collective effort could this country have hoped to recover from its economic collapse.

Although it is present in this photograph, this young man’s mission and part in the reconstruction of his country are more easily recognizable in a glitched version of this image which I have created. In his article Glitching History, Michael J. Kramer explains that these glitches help to bring about the same elements I have discussed above from photographs. These seemingly random changes highlight different aspects of an image and bring new critical analysis to the foreground.

In the case of my photograph, the young man’s hands, mouth, and eyes are all separated from one another and draw the viewer’s eyes to his helmet embossed with the acronym T.V.A. The young man’s grit (as symbolized by his hands), satisfaction (as symbolized by his proud smile), and focus on rebuilding his nation (as symbolized by the determined look in his eyes) all lead back towards his helmet which was provided to him by a government program set on rebuilding the nation. All these different pieces are emphasized in this glitched image and highlight their importance towards the central goal of reconstruction.

Thanks to the practice of glitching, viewers can recognize these powerful factors that brought our nation back from the Great Depression as well as those who helped to accomplish this goal.

Tightening a Nut Exhibit

Tightening a Nut Item

Changing Our Approach to Primary Sources

This Monday, our class had the opportunity to receive a guest lecture from Tony Guidone, a graduate student at George Mason University composing research on the cultural impacts of international trade in Salem, Massachusetts. In his presentation, Guidone challenged our perspectives on what can be considered a primary source, introduced challenges posed by the digitization of these sources, and provided the class with useful methods for keyword searching in these documents.

Guidone opened his presentation by asking our class for a definition of a primary source, to which one of my classmates responded: an original source. Our speaker agreed and proceeded to pass around a number of textual primary sources, mostly comprised of newspapers. Once the papers had made their way around the class, Guidone then drew out two coins from his bag and explained that although texts serve as useful primary sources, artifacts such as coins also serve as primary sources and can provide different insights into the lives of individuals living at a particular time. I found this subversion of expectations to be very powerful. Many students, including myself, appeared to have been exposed to textual primary sources but had not considered the implications of examining other artifacts such as coins.

After sharing this insight with the class, Guidone then placed the two coins under the classroom’s projector and asked us to identify any differences between the two coins. Many of us noted that the two coins were colored differently, and Guidone responded by informing us that the difference in color was the result of the materials that composed the coins. He stated that the coin produced in 1943 was actually composed of a lighter substance than the coin produced in 1940 due to metal being rationed during the Second World War. Guidone went on to explain questions that experts consider about the differences between the two coins: How would an average citizen come to think about their government based on the quality of the coins that it produced? He also stated that these questions would be lost on someone examining a digitized image of these two coins.

Prior to Guidone’s lecture, our class was asked to read Ian Milligan’s essay, Illusionary Order: Online Databases, Optical Character Recognition, and Canadian History, 1997-2010. Here, he speaks on these types of issues with respect to the limitations of OCR software, stating: We can see an accuracy rate in the 40 per cent ballpark… perhaps even more than half of the information may be missed through keyword searching. Just as the weight of Guidone’s coins were lost on his audience, so are many possible primary sources for researchers. [enf_note]Ian Milligan, Illusionary Order: Online Databases, Optical Character Recognition, and Canadian History, 1997-2010, The Canadian Historical Review Volume 94 Number 4, December 2013[/enf_note]

Guidone ended his lecture by demonstrating a keyword search. Searching for the keyword ‘Asia’ in 17th century newspapers yielded few results. However, searching for the keyword ‘East’ garnered far more. He left us with a reminder that Keyword searching involves considering the vocabulary used by people living at a particular time and not our own vernacular.

History 390: The Digital Past – Assignment No. 1

Part 1

Before classes began this August, I got together with a number of my friends, and we discussed the courses that we would were taking this semester. When I spoke about this class, a good friend of mine laughed and jeeringly remarked that come the end of the semester I would walk away with only useless information on the history of the punch card and a few vague facts about the life of Alan Turing. However, after attending last week’s sessions, I learned that my cynical friend could not have been farther from the truth. While I cannot argue that its start may have been quite dry, digital history tells the stories of countless imaginative and innovative people, who challenged the very nature of information as it had come to be understood by everyone prior to them. Author Jorge Luis Borges envisioned stories that extended beyond the pages of books and empowered readers to become an actors in their own stories; and Ted Nelson, possibly inspired by Borges’ vision of a new, freer style of information, went on to develop Project Xanadu, a program that would allow readers the ability to navigate electronic documents along paths they themselves had chosen. Although they do not appear shocking to someone living in the 21st century, when placed in the context of our informational past, these ideas were revolutionary and continue to influence the ways in which we approach the digital world. While I’m unsure as to whether or not these topics will be covered in the course, I’m hoping to take a closer look at Borges and Nelson’s philosophies as well as the long-term transition from using information technology as a tool to organize people (i.e. punch cards) towards its use today as a cross-cultural media and information sharing platform.

Part 2

The digital project assigned to me is entitled, “The Lost Museum”. It digitally reconstructs Barnum’s American Museum through a virtual exhibit that incorporates 3D imaging and multimedia narratives in the form of hyperlinks scattered throughout the museum’s interior and digital imaging. The sources used in this project include posters, documents, and digital reconstructions of artifacts found within the museum prior to its eventual collapse. As mentioned earlier, the sources used in this project were processed as historical sites or digital images. These processed sources are scattered throughout a digital reconstruction of the museum’s interior, and online visitors may explore them as they see fit. Although it does an excellent job of reconstructing the museum, the project makes it difficult for a visitor to explore its contents. Perhaps the use of virtual reality equipment and software would solve this problem. However, placing this criticism aside, the project captivates its audience and provides them with a true 19^th century museum experience, one unimaginable without the use of digital technology.