This week we are moving full steam ahead towards creating effective visualizations for the Hungerford School Project. We learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center has written to Orange County Public Schools advising them that their client, the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, would like the land that was the site of the Hungerford Normal and Industrial School returned to the Eatonville community as it was originally intended to benefit the community through education in perpetuity and they contend that the sale of the property for development that does not accomplish this is against the community’s wishes. Additionally, they make a compelling case that the sale of the land “likely violates OCPS’s civil rights obligations including under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964” (Anderson 2023, 1).
Our research this week focuses on three concepts presented in Digital_Humanities by Anne Burdick, et al., that revolve around “The Project as Basic Unit,” “Institutions and Pragmatics,” and “Creating Advocacy” (Burdick 2012, 124-7, 135). We have broken into teams to begin analyzing source collections using these concepts as a point of reference as we develop our ideas for visualization of the data that our research uncovers. Using Digital Humanities tools enhances “models of sharing, co-creation, publication, and community-building" which is precisely what we are attempting to do with this project (Burdick et al. 2012, 123).
My team has decided to examine the Fenske v. Coddington case file. This collection is held by the State Archives of Florida. The contents of the sources are related to the objection to the sale in 1951 by an heir of the original donor of the land, Constance Hungerford Fenske. By analyzing these sources, we have decided to focus on a method of geospatial visualization that can be quickly accomplished using ArcGIS Story Maps to present a scalable, geographic representation of the Eatonville community while pulling in aspects of the data we find to help a broad audience both understand the situation at hand regarding the sale of the property as well as create connections with them that might foster involvement of those outside of the Eatonville community (Burdick et al. 2012, 125, 130, 134). Even though it most directly impacts the local residents of Eatonville, the sale of this property as a site of historical importance affects far more than just this small community. We need to be able to use these visualizations as tools to show the public why this is an important site, and we need to do it quickly!
Click this link to read our report.
Bibliography
Anderson, Kristen. Kirsten Anderson to Amy Envall. “Letter from SPLC to OCPS.” February 14, 2023. Accessed March 3, 2023, https://drive.google.com/file/d/15f9opKbEGYc_blUC75uX9L9mfcjgXKf1/view
Burdick, Anne, et al. "A Short Guide to the Digital_Humanities." In Digital_Humanities. 121-135. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012.
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