Author: S. Michael Sleeter

Sleeter, S. Michael. “Southwest History Project.” StoryMap JS. https://storymap.knightlab.com/edit/?id=southwest-history-project.

            I worked with Storymap JS for this tool test.  The site allows you to take pictures and mark where they are from on a map.  It has a space of a caption and you can cite the source of the picture too.  There is a headline that you can write to name the picture or place, depending on how you are setting up the story.  Below the headline box is a place for text.  This box can be utilized in several different ways.  The most obvious one is to tell that part of the story for that picture.  It can also be used to simply describe the picture or the place that is being shown.  Finally it can be used to give information about the history of the area featured in the picture.   This is a great way to organize pictures or to use pictures to tell a story that is connected to locations.  The site is easy to use and the maps are simple to put together.

For this test I used pictures that I took in conjunction with the Southwest history project.  I wanted some primary source material that I controlled the rights too just to make things easier.  I laid out the pictures into a kind of tour of the area that people could use to guide themselves to important sites in the district.  I added a little bit of text as part of the trial, I will go back in fill in the historical research that I have done on these places to bring the tour up to professional quality.  Also I could have united the places by telling a story.  Not just having people travel through the space of the district, but traveling through the time as well.  That will be something I consider when I revise this project. 

This program is a real good tool for both professional digital historians and casual ones.  Students learning about history can also put this site to good use as a way to present projects they have worked on.  The photos were easy to upload, but they had to be the right size.  I had to crop all the photos I took because of the size limits.  The other issue I had was that you could only have one photo per slide.  This is annoying if you wanted to display multiple photos of a place.  You would have to set up multiple markers at one site.

I look forward to revising my test project and using this site in future projects to help people understand the history of space.  I am a strong believer in that you need to understand geography to have a full grasp of history.  This is one more tool to help people accomplish that goal.    

“Mitakuyepi! Welcome!” Bdote Memory Map. http://bdotememorymap.org/.

The Bdote Memory Map started out as a local history project on a wall of the Ancient Traders Gallery in Minneapolis.  The gallery is a community center for the Dakota people in the area.  The visitors who toured the gallery participated in the collection of the community history by writing their memories of Dakota sites on the wall.  The wall featured a map of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and was marked with important Dakota sites.  It displayed the sites with their Dakota names and allowed people to connect with those places.  Eventually the memories found a new home as they became digitized and turned into the bdote memory map.  The website is a continuation of the map on the gallery wall, plus the addition of educational tools and a telling of Dakota history. 

The website presents itself extremely well.  It is eye-catching and reflects the Dakota culture in many facets.  The main page has a menu that allows visitors to navigate the site.  A tab at the bottom of the page provides users with some background information about the Dakota.  It did not take me long to learn why this site was called the “bdote” memory map.  Clicking on the bottom of the circle takes the user to a video where a video shows a greeting in the Dakota tradition.  A click to the right side of the circle and the user finds a video that explains the Dakota place in the world as “Urban Tribesmen.”  The short video explains how the city is their home even after losing the land their ancestors lived on for hundreds of years.   Clicking on the top of the circle takes the visitor to the memory map.  It contains places around the Minneapolis-St. Paul area that are important to the Dakota tribe.  When the user clicks on the site, they choose a list of videos about specific spots.  Many of the videos are oral histories by people who witnessed the history that unfolded at those places.  The left side of the circle provides a link to a brief history of the Dakota people in the area.  It also explains the importance of being connected to a place.  Tabs at the top of the page provide a Dakota glossary with words read by the Dakota people themselves.  There are also lesson plans for teachers to help them teach about the Dakota tribe.

I found this website to be a great resource, it contains great primary sources and the information is easy to access.   The first thing that I noticed was that this website encompasses everything that public history is.   It is a community history, written by the community, for the education of the community and the public in general.  It provides insight into the history of the Dakota people in the twin cities area of Minnesota.  It allows community members to participate by adding their voices to the record and it allows young Dakotas to learn their history and traditions from their tribe members.  This well-designed site is very user-friendly.  It is a great place to learn more about the Dakota people for anyone who is interested in learning about them.  This site would be especially useful to anyone doing research on the Dakota people.  The oral histories are especially valuable for the stories that they record about the people and their experiences. Go and see for yourself, if nothing more than to discover why it is called the bdote memory map.

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Warren, Christopher, Daniel Shore, Jessica Otis, Scott Weingart, and John Ladd. Six Degrees of Francis Bacon. Accessed February 23, 2019. http://www.sixdegreesoffrancisbacon.com.

The website Six Degrees of Francis Bacon an attempt to link the English philosopher and public official Francis Bacon to his contemporaries, who lived during the Elizabethan era. Bacon sits in the center of what is a visual who’s who of the period. Names range from important to the lesser-known. This site is a great starting point for research on the era, and it is a great example of what crowd sourcing can do as the public contributes data for the site. The visual connections could aid a researcher in noticing a relationship they may have missed. The public has the ability to add new people to the web and expand the connections of the people already there.

While Queen Elizabeth would seem to be the obvious choice for a project like this, Francis Bacon is an excellent choice. Not only is it a parody of the Six Degrees of Keven Bacon game, but Sir Bacon had many spheres of influence during his life. He was a philosopher, scientist, and he served as Queen Elizabeth’s Lord High Chancellor. This gives him contacts with many types of people during his life who operated in many different spheres.

The website is easy to use, and after interacting with it for a bit of time it becomes easier to understand. A tutorial takes you through all the site’s features in a few minutes for those who would like a systematic guide. The data is displayed as a three-dimensional web that can be manipulated by clicking and dragging . Sir Bacon sits in the middle and different strands connect him to various people of the time. Although the site bears his name, researchers can make any name the focus of a smaller web with just a click. Although the name does mention six degrees this is somewhat misleading as only two levels of connections are available. Another feature is the ability to view groups of people. For instance, the researcher can click on one of the metadata boxes at the bottom of the page and call up all the philosophers in the web. There are almost 75 categories to activate. When viewing a person’s web, the boxes at the bottom light up to signal that members of those professions are present. To meet the needs of researchers who require more information about the people in the web, a box to the left provides links to three different research sites where more information is available.

The audience for this website may vary greatly. The connection to six degrees of Keven Bacon may attract casual web surfers. They may not stay for long though because the site is limited for that use. Researchers of the Elizabethan Age of England will get the most out of this site. Being able to see connections or looking for new relationships is what this site does best. Causal history buffs might get something out of this site too. They would be the target audience if the connections ran deeper. It is feasible that a casual history buff could spend hours seeing who claims a connection to Francis Bacon and wind up exploring those connections for hours. Maybe they will expand the Bacon web in the future.

The website makes for an interesting research tool. Both researchers and casual users would be able to get something out of a visit to this site. The lack of depth is a bit disappointing. The two levels of connections are a limit to both research and fun, but again, maybe the future will allow for expansion into a site worthy of its name.

Nevada Test Site: Oral History Project. Unlv. Southern Nevada: The Boomtown Years Mining. Accessed February 25, 2019. http://digital.library.unlv.edu/ntsohp/.

This website is a collection of stories about the nuclear testing that was done in the Nevada desert north of Las Vegas. Over 1000 nuclear detonations were initiated at the test site between its opening in 1951 and 1992 when the United States finally ended nuclear weapons testing. The website has collected 335 hours of recordings from many different people connected to the site both directly and indirectly. There are stories told by people who were in the military that were in charge of operations at the site.  Contributions from physicists, other scientists, and engineers who worked on developing and building the nuclear devices that were being tested and the experiments that recorded data about their effectiveness. There are even stories from people who tried promoting peace by protesting the activities taking place at the test site. Native Americans lend their voices also to tell the story of how the desert is a sacred place to their tribes. 

The home page is well organized and easy to navigate.  There are links below the header that will take researchers to a timeline, the collection of stories, or maps of the relevant areas.  The timeline covers the entire Manhattan Project and it designates what events took place at the Nevada Test Site.  Clicking on an event on the timeline will take the researcher to interviews that talk about that time.  This is a very convenient search feature.  Going to the link Community of Voices gives the researcher access to all the interviews that the site has collected.  There is a search feature but no explanation on the metadata.  The search can be done by person or key word or phrase. 

The interviews are all recorded video.  The people telling their stories can be seen talking and giving their recount of events.  There are a wide range of perspectives to choose from.  The military people and scientists who were working inside the test site give researchers a feel for their work and conditions, while protesters and peace activists tell the tales of how they tried to stop the experiments that were designed to build bigger and better weapons.  The Natives American recount how the land is sacred to them and how this military base has affected their people by cutting them off from the land of their ancestors.  The stories go beyond the Manhattan project and the Cold War.  They talk about how lives were changed by the work done at the test site. 

This is a great website to use for research on the Cold War.  The ability to search by event, date, or key word is extremely useful.  This would be a great start to uncover primary accounts of the development of the American nuclear program.  It is also very helpful if doing Native American studies or research on the peace movement that went on during the Cold War.  The stories are easy to access and they are well documented.  This would be a useful site to even the casual user who just wanted to learn more about the era. 

1892 marked the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ landing in the Americas.  To mark the occasion the 1893 World’s Fair would be a celebration of that event.  The city of Chicago won the right to host the fair, beating out New York in a

very close vote.  Planners would put on an incredible display of human achievement on the shores of the biggest lake in the United States.  Officially it was called the World’s Colombian Exposition, its nickname was The White City.  The main focus of the exposition would be Columbus’ voyage, however, the plan would be to show off all sorts of exhibits from around the world.  Any country that wanted to participate would be given a display area to showcase their culture and achievements.  As with other World’s Fairs during this time, many new inventions would be seen by the public for the first time.  However, the legacy of the White City would not be the glimpse into the future it provided, but a legacy of death.

A Celebration Built on a Lie

By the 1880s, it was known that Columbus was not the first European to set foot in the Americas.  Researchers had uncovered evidence that Leif Ericsson had landed in Eastern Canada and made it as far south as modern

day Massachusetts.  Usually when new evidence is uncovered, the story is retold with the new facts, however in this case a powerful organization in the United States that would use its influence to keep Columbus in a place of historical prominence.  The Italian American Association used its influence to prevent Columbus from being demoted in the history books in the wake of these new revelations.  Their lobbying efforts were successful in keeping Columbus and his voyage the main focus of the 1893 World’s Fair.  Through their continued efforts Columbus would eventually receive a national holiday, one that is steeped in controversy.   Columbus changed the course of history, there is no doubt about that.  The problem with the Columbus story is the way it has been told in schools for many years.  In most textbooks Columbus gets the hero treatment.  The part of the story that gets left out is the millions of deaths he is responsible for.   The 1893 World Colombian Exposition did not mention his kidnapping of natives who were taken back to Spain and paraded through the streets like trophies.  Nor would visitors find a description of his treatment of the natives, who he and his men tortured to make them hunt for gold.  Details like how he spread disease among the natives would go untold in favor of tales of heroism, the wonders of discovery, and the opening up of this great land to the pioneers that would follow.  Not exactly the multi-voiced truth of history that one would hope to find today.

A Celebration of Mass Murder Hides a Serial Killer

Columbus’ blood soaked legacy was not the only horror attached to the 1893 Exposition.  Blocks from the fair a man opened a building and rented out rooms to people coming from out of town to visit the fair.  Many who rented a room there never checked out.  The building was owned by Dr. H. H. Holmes, and would be known as the Murder Castle.  History would record Holmes as America’s first serial killer, and most of his killing would be done in his Chicago complex that he custom-made for murder.  There were hidden gas vents for killing unsuspecting guests.  Chutes ran from rooms directly to a sub-basement where a kiln oven awaited bodies dumped down the chute,  incinerated with no one the wiser.  Due of the shoddy record keeping at the time, no one knows how many people died in that building.  Estimates are between 20 and 200, and there is no way to do any forensic research since the building was burnt down and any remaining evidence has been long destroyed.

The Best and the Worst of Humanity

It is ironic that the first serial killer in America operated in the shadow of a celebration of the first mass murder in the history of the Americas.  The World’s Colombian Exposition of 1893 is a reminder of how important multiple voices are when telling any history story.  By giving the Italian American Association too big a voice Columbus stands much taller in history than he probably should.  Today you can still visit grounds where the fair was held.  The main attraction is the Museum of Science and Industry, a museum dedicated to the technical achievements of man, much like the fair was.  While the fair did give us the Ferris Wheel, it also gave us an important lesson about how we remember history.

 

Additional Reading

The Chicago Sun Times “On its 125th birthday, what’s left from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition?” 4/29/2018

Larson, Erik  The Devil in the White City  Crown Publishers 2003

 

 

With the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution, the United States became a very different place for the people who were held in slavery.  They were now legal citizens, could now be taught how to read, and were free to pursue their own destinies, however it was not going to be that easy.  During the ten years of the Reconstruction period the former slaves made great gains socially, economically, and politically.  With the protection of the Federal Government in the form of soldiers that were overseeing the Reconstruction process, African Americans were able to hold elected office, start businesses, and build schools.  However, with the end of Reconstruction and the withdraw of the soldiers from Southern states, the former slaves and their children lost the support of the Federal Government.  As power returned to the states and cities the defeated rebels would try everything they could to hold on the the old social order.  Poll taxes and literacy tests would suppress the African-American vote.  The Klu Klux Klan would rise to frighten and terrorize those who sought equality between the former slaves and their former masters.  One of the main ways to control the African American population was to pass city ordinances preventing the ownership of property by “colored people”.  These laws would lead to the creation of Sundown Towns.

A decent place to work, but you are not allowed to live there.

The term Sundown Town refers to a city or town that has legal ordinances that prevent minorities, usually African Americans, from owning property or renting a place to live within the city limits.  They could come in an work there, but they had to be out by sundown, hence the name.  The main goal of these laws was an attempt to keep the social order of the Antebellum South where separation of the races was a hard and fast rule.  If they could no longer keep their African slaves at least they could keep the social order as best they could.  The result being that the townsfolk would see the African Americans working at their menial jobs, but when they returned home they would not have to be bothered with the sight of them.  Their children would not attend school or play in the same parks together.

A legacy of hypocrisy

In his autobiography, Malcolm X noticed how upper class white people would come to Harlem on Friday nights to dance to the bands made up of African American musicians.  He would point out that these people enjoying the music would not give the musician the time of day if they crossed paths on the street.  That same hypocrisy can be seen in the workings of a sundown town.  The people will allow the African Americans to come in and cook their food and clean their houses, but have no interest in getting to actually know them on a personal level.  The result of this separation has created a climate where racism will continue unabated.  One of the best ways to combat racism is to get to know people who are different from you.  If you never get a chance to interact with different people then stereotypes become more believable.  The lasting legacy of these towns can still be felt today.

Sundown Towns today

Dr. James Loewen has compiled oral histories of Sundown towns.  He details the work in his book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism.  He also maintains a website for those interested in contributing toward his project.  He has compiled a list of towns in every state that have low percentages of African Americans.  He has been criticized for his research methods, however, his project should not be totally dismissed.  He makes a good point of identifying towns with skewed demographics, but he has a hard time proving the causes of those numbers.  His contention that some of the numbers are by design, but some of the numbers are there due to other socio-economic reasons.

Further Readings and Resources

The American Black Holocaust Museum

Traveling Route 66 While Black