I am planning to use the Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007, which was prepared under the direction of the Committee on House Administration of the U.S. House of Representatives, by the Office of History and Preservation, Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives, as a data set for the assignment. This book describes the African American Representatives during the reconstruction era about their lifetime and what they have done as a surrogate of the black community. Freedom’s lawmakers, written by Eric Foner, is also a good source of African American lawmakers during the Reconstruction era. I am planning to create a data map for the African American Representatives through the Reconstruction era, which can provide a brief expression. The visualized data can help the audience understand which states that the African American legislators represented, and which party they stand for. I would also like to create a list for African American Representatives. For each Representative, I would write details about their background, legislative priorities, surrogate representation, and all the information will educate the audience what African American Representatives have done to change their social positions and mainstream stereotypes. My work will provide the chance to experience the struggle of African Americans after the civil war and with poor recognition. It is hard to change the mainstream idea that African Americans was treated as the slave, but African American Representatives who served in Reconstruction era have worked to improve their social position that African Americans should have the equal rights as white people does.
Spring 2020
Your project shows a lot of potential for the way that you want to visualize the geography of political activism during Reconstruction (ca. 1870). I want to encourage you to think more deeply about your research questions and hypothesize what visualizing this data as a data map can do for the history of Reconstruction more broadly. Be more specific about the year or set of years you want to analyze. If you want to hone in on the political identities of Black legislators (assumedly Republican), what does this perspective do to expand or challenge the way we think about the Republican Party during Reconstruction? How does this challenge the misperception that white Republicans “led” the expansion of civil rights during this period? It might be worth adding to this visualization the density of black populations and whether elected black legislators are representing these areas? In other words, is there a correlation between community and political activism? Is there a local, grassroots component of Reconstruction that has been overlooked?