An extended collaboration between Northwestern faculty, students, and librarians resulted in this month’s debut of a new digital exhibit highlighting an under-researched segment of Black history in Illinois.
The exhibit, “Black Organizing in Pre-Civil War Illinois: Creating Community, Demanding Justice,” resides at Penn State University’s Colored Conventions Project, a repository of digital scholarship about Black Americans’ political mobilization in the 19th century.
“This was an ambitious project to begin with, and it resulted in something truly substantial by the time we were done,” said Josh Honn, the digital humanities librarian who supported an undergraduate class that kickstarted the two-year research effort.
Honn worked closely with Weinberg College history professor Kate Masur on the spring 2020 course “Abolition and Equality: 19th Century Black Activism in the Midwest.” The class required undergraduate students to do research in digital archives about Black activism in the precarious years before abolition. In 1853, organizers held Illinois’ own Colored Convention, one of many such regular assemblies around the country that engaged free-born and formerly enslaved Blacks in the struggle for racial justice in America.
In his supporting role for the course, Honn consulted with students about conducting research, exploring digital archives, and telling narratives for online audiences. As the research unfolded, it became clear there was a bigger story to tell here worthy of a Colored Conventions Project exhibit, Honn said.
“This is an often under-represented history of Black organizing,” Honn said. “After slavery, many often skip to thinking about the Great Migration and the Black Renaissance in Chicago. But this exhibit highlights the important struggles, joys, and solidarities of Black freedom movements in the mid-19th century, especially in the southern border towns in the state of Illinois.”
So the scope of the project expanded to include Weinberg graduate students to write biographies of Black activists and gather data. Mech Frazier, one of the Libraries’ specialists in mapping software, and Matt Taylor, director of Weinberg’s Media and Design Studio, helped Honn and the students make interactive map visualizations that depict Black settlement patterns in Illinois and the locations of Underground Railroad safe houses in Chicago.
“These students did an enormous amount of work,” Honn said. “The result is a significant contribution to Illinois history.”
Northwestern will host a project launch celebration at 4 p.m., Tuesday, March 1. The event will feature a panel discussion with project creators. Free and open to the public, visitors may attend the event virtually or in person at Kresge Hall, 1880 Sheridan Road (Room 1515) on the Evanston campus. In-person seating is limited.