Here is the link for my Map https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/01c6c4260be82d66c0fbd0d6fc4f3a1c/northern-arizona-a-journey-through-the-red-rocks-pines-and-canyons/index.html
Using the WPA guidebook Arizona: A State Guide was actually a lot of fun. I chose Arizona because I am an Arizona native and I was curious to see what parts of that beautiful state the WPA thought would be interesting to see. The guidebook itself was pretty thorough, the tour I chose had many stops and even today would make for a great day or even a weekend trip.
I think as a whole the Guidebook Series 1 is an interesting resource and I am glad that the Library of Congress has held on to them and made them available digitally. 2
Looking at the green book map of my trip was interesting, there was not one single stop on my tour that was also on the green book 3
. I could take this to mean that Arizona was not the most diverse of places at the time or that it was simply too rural and under developed to warrant much information. As most of the tour I looked at was outdoors and naturalistic areas I don’t think that there would be a great deal of difference in the experiences of white or African American tourists. That being said I am sure that stops at diners or hotels along the way may have varied. I did some research and found that unfortunately there a great deal of Jim Crowism in Arizona at the time. A recent article discusses how Flagstaff was segregated. 4 5 6
So minorities on this tour would have had to deal with segregation as they toured the state.
Mapping data like this is a wonderful visual tool. Seeing that there are virtually no stops from the green book in all of Northern Arizona was disappointing. It was just emptiness, no safe zones. I sincerely hope that the emptiness is also indicative of the rural-ness and that it was not a dangerous place for people of color. But realistically I think that the lack of safe places means that overall it was dangerous for people of color to travel in the area.
- Utah State University Library.The American Guide Series: American Culture Defined: The American Guide Series. Accessed November 8, 2019. http://exhibits.usu.edu/exhibits/show/americanguideseries/americanguideseries
- Library of Congress. WPA Publications in the Library Collections. Accessed November 8, 2019. https://www.loc.gov/collections/federal-theatre-project-1935-to-1939/articles-and-essays/amassing-american-stuff/wpa-publications-in-the-library-collections/
- Navigating the Green Book.A public domain remix by Brian Foo of NYPL Labs, using the data released by NYPL. Accessed November 8, 2019. https://publicdomain.nypl.org/greenbook-map/
- https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/arizona/the-untold-segregation-story-arizona/75-49177538
- interesting side note this article utilized the same timeline software that we used in our timeline assessment
- http://timeline.knightlab.com/
