The state I wanted to examine for this assignment was Oklahoma. My mom is from a small town near Tulsa and I have been to visit many times. Oklahoma always surprised me because it is flat and dry but for some reason I found it beautiful and homey. I chose to do the one in the guide which took people from the Kansas state line to the city of Tulsa. Along the way I choose mainly all big cities and only two smaller stops. I found that many places in Oklahoma were once indian territories and so Indians either still lived around or the place was named based off the tribes. I found it interesting that the Airport in Tulsa used to be one of the busiest airports in the world. I never think people fly through Oklahoma so it surprised me. Another thing I found interesting was the Claremore stop. It was known for finding mineral water that healed people. I looked further into this and saw that there are now resorts there for healing people with the water.
On the green book maps I typed in Baxter springs Kansas as my starting point and Tulsa Oklahoma as the end. I saw that there were no stops along the way that were considered “safe” stops. In the heat map view of the same location there was only some faint blue places but none on my path. I was not shocked to see this because I know that the south was more racist at the time. I can really see now how “Digital mapping and database construction can allow us to reconstruct, preserve, and visualize vestiges of the past”. I knew the south was a hard place to live and travel for people of color but seeing it laid out on a map and knowing they would have to travel for thousands of miles with no safe place to stop is eye opening. I think seeing it mapped out like this can make a person understand it more. Comparing the Green Book maps to my first map , I can conclude that all of the neat tourism stops were only for white people. People of color would not get to safely experience any of these back then. I think this is interesting because the American Guide series were written to “convey the “true” America to its people “ and I feel in a way it did but comparing the three different maps conveys more about true America then the single guide.
Bond, Sarah. Mapping Racism and Assessing the Success of Digital Humanities. October 2017, https://sarahemilybond.com/2017/10/20/mapping-racism-and-assessing-the-success-of-the-digital-humanities/
The American Guide Series: American Culture defined: The American Guide Series. Digital Exhibits. http://exhibits.usu.edu/exhibits/show/americanguideseries/americanguideseries
Mulligan, Shannon. Kansas line to Tulsa OK, November 2019. https://storymap.knightlab.com/edit/?id=kansas-line-to-tulsa-ok
