Digital Harlem

Reviewed by: Yesenny Fernandez

Review started: March 6, 2022

Review finished: March 8, 2022

Site Link: http://digitalharlem.org/

Data and Sources

• Web maps
• Case Files
• Legal records
• Newspapers
• Timelines
• Photographs
• Publications
• Research
• Blog

Processes

• The project creators had to research from books, publications, and legal records all the content about everyday life in Harlem from 1915-1930. But there is a more detailed guide to how to use the site, and updates and news about the project, on the Digital Harlem blog.

Presentation

• This is an interactive website with pop-up windows when the user enters the home page or about page allowing us to read the background of the project.
• The menu of the project has pop-up windows for the “sources” or “publications” used, for how to search “events,” “places.” and “person.” In addition, the site has a “FAQ” pop-up window and another one for the blog I mentioned above.
• The site is a research tool for exploring 1920s Harlem therefore there are no interviews as we have seen in many other digital memory projects.
• Most importantly, the interactive maps are the focus of the project as they display the events that happened in Harlem.
• In the blog, Twitter comments are highlighted.

Digital Tools Used to Build It

• Academic Knowledge Management System Heurist
• Creative Commons
• Google Maps
• WordPress
• NameCheap

Languages

• English

Review

Digital Harlem is an interactive research project focusing on the life of residents in Harlem from 1915 to 1930. The project highlights daily activities, places, and the communities that made up and impacted Harlem. It was created by four historians in the Department of History at the University of Sydney, in Australia: Shane White, Stephen Garton, Graham White, and Stephen Robertson, with the assistance of Delwyn Elizabeth, Nick Irving, Michael Thompson, Conor Hannan, and Anna Lebovic.

On the left side of the site, there is a menu with two sides, one for maps and one for legend. The legend information is very useful as it tells the user what each icon represents so when we look at the map we can identify the type of event right away. Then when it comes to the maps the creators have separated these into five sections with images that are clickable, and each is used to display a different type of informative map. There is one for January 1925^th, nightlife, churches, sports, and number of arrests. Indeed, this site is different from what we are used to seeing when it comes to Harlem since we tend to always focus on it as the renaissance of the many middle-class artists and deprioritize ordinary African New Yorkers. When selecting “Night Life” the map comes up with a legend which highlights what the map is presenting and, in this case, we can see “Buffet Flat”, “Nightclub” “speakeasy” and others. It is interesting to see how many Buffet Flats there were. According to a blog online these “were small, privately owned unlicensed clubs where customers could engage in such mundane illegal pastimes as drinking and gambling.” Moreover, I like the flexibility of the site allowing the user to select which filters to focus on while learning the content being provided. But besides these secular activities, Harlem had its sacred side; it was indeed a neighborhood surrounded by churches. By looking at the Churches map and hovering over the tooltip the user can see the first location for a church in Harlem in 1915 (153, W 136th St.)

Moreover, when it comes to athletics, basketball was the dominant sport played by the residents in Harlem. When it comes to the Number of Arrest map, my gaze is right away focused on all these red lines connecting to events that happened and involved Harlem residents. What I find very interesting is that for all these maps the actual location where the event happened is public. Wouldn’t this be considered as a violation of the privacy of these individuals even if they are deceased?

The project makes sure to add external sources such as the book “A Decade of Probation: A Study and Report” by the Chief Probation Officer, Irving Halpern, in 1939. In addition to photographs from the 1920s and scanned newspapers, making it a more interactive and visually appealing project.

What could have improved?

• The pop-up windows which are supposed to clearly explain how to use the site are cut off and there is no way to view the entire message being displayed. In addition, these are screenshots and if the user was to zoom in, the font fades out.
• I noticed the site is very accessible. People with disabilities might find it very difficult to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the site because the font is very small.
• The timeline is very complicated to use.
• The year 1925^th has a designated map highlighting events that happened during that year. But why did the creators choose this year in specific? The description is not clear and does not provide content.

After carefully reviewing this project, it reminded me of Risam’s argument in The Digital Black Atlantic, where the author makes institutions such as libraries responsible for the “devaluation facilitated by lack of representation in the academy; segregation within universities; and the restructuring and defunding of African American, Africana, Black, and Ethnic Studies departments.” Indeed, Digital Harlem brought an important message, and it is that Harlem was not the perfect neighborhood we tend to read about in books from the 1920s, there were also people who were not artists, writers, and musicians. There is no doubt that we are aware that libraries play a central role in constructing the digital cultural record yet there is an “overwhelming whiteness of library leadership.” Even Alistair Thomson in his article mentions how “the lived experience of working-class, women's or black history was undocumented or ill-recorded,” and this was one of the reasons why Social Historian, Paul Thompson defended “oral history against critics who claimed that memory was an unreliable historical source.” He believed in the words and experiences of working-class people, and he focused on “new areas of inquiry, by challenging assumptions and accepted judgments of historians. by bringing recognition to substantial groups of people who had been ignored.” This is exactly what the creators of Digital Harlem aimed to accomplish.