To Organize, Organize, ORGANIZE

Staking a claim in collaborative models of digital archiving, exhibition and geo-spatial visualization, Sarah Patterson and Jim Casey will introduce questions, concepts and outcomes central to the Colored Conventions Project’s online restoration of the Colored Conventions Movement, 1830-1900. Working with literature and data connected to this understudied phenomenon in Black political organizing, Patterson and Casey will discuss the ways CCP’s interdisciplinary team produces narrative-centric exhibits and interactive visualizations for multiple learning communities. This presentation will especially chart CCP’s interest in tackling key questions on its journey to creating DH content for those interested in social justice pedagogies and collaborative knowledge production. Questions of focus will include: How do we better grasp women’s instrumentality through mapping technologies that magnify their activities within historical spaces connected to the movement? How do social network analyses contribute to our understanding of Black convention leadership? In what ways do concepts of power and authority impact computing and technology-selection as the project emerges within a broader landscape of Black histo-digital studies? We seek to highlight DH praxis and pedagogies to enhance what scholarly and public audiences know about the debates, people, places and texts related to the seven-decades-long campaign for Black rights.