Underground Railroad
Our first successful effort
at making the connection between geography, technology, and history was
in using GIS to expand and deepen the student understanding of the Underground
Railroad.
Overview
In the antebellum United States, the Underground Railroad served as
a series of safe houses and individuals who assisted fugitive enslaved
persons The Underground Railroad helped these fugitive slaves find their
way to safety in the north by providing food, shelter, transportation,
and sometimes false documents. After the Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened
by the Compromise of 1850, it became illegal for citizens throughout
the United States to refuse to assist in capturing and returning fugitives
to their owners. Concurrently, the punishments for assisting fugitives
became quite prohibitive. In spite of the personal risk, thousands of
citizens continued to assist fugitives.
By 1860, it is estimated
that between 40,000 and 50,000 fugitive slaves lived in Canada. Because
of the clandestine nature of the Underground Railroad network, it has
been difficult for historians to ascertain the exact routes, numbers
of fugitives, and identities of the “conductors” who helped
the escapees along the way. Many of the enslaved people who decided
to flee bondage in the South simply located and followed the North Star,
Polaris, and began a long, lonely trip north to freedom. Canada became
the destination for fugitives who were intent on a secure freedom. To
this day, the Underground Railroad remains an intriguing subject with
much to explore, and it is especially compelling for young adolescents
with their strong aversion sensitivity to injustice.
Student pairs began this
project by reading the authentic biographies of individuals who had
successfully escaped slavery. (Palmer-Maloney and Bloom, 2001) Using
information gleaned from these primary documents, students employed
atlases to make an initial list of Underground Railroad stops and plotted
them informally on a paper outline map of the United States and Canada.
The students were then instructed to create journals matching the locations
on their initial maps. Biographical details from their subject's escape
narrative and geographic information culled from the atlases were to
be woven into the journal entries. The third and most salient component
of the project involved mapping the route of their subject's flight
to freedom using ArcView 3.2 GIS software. Students produced photo-quality
maps with at least ten stops that replicated the actual routes of their
subject and then complemented their journal entries.4
Table 1 - Elements of the Pull of Polaris Module
| |
Description
|
Goals/Objectives
|
GIS skills |
| Step 1 |
Read authentic
fugitive enslaved person’s biography |
Chart routes
on paper outline maps; analyze risks and benefits of fugitive’s
route to freedom. Determine pros and cons of using escape route
through Kentucky/Ohio v. escaping via Eastern Seaboard |
Use GIS
shape files to determine the route’s elevations and the rivers
that had to be crossed |
| Step 2 |
Create journal entries |
Glean geographic information
from primary document |
Find features on GIS
map using identify tool; Incorporate geographic details from fugitive’s
biography into journal entries |
| Step 3 |
Create final GIS map |
Plot geographic locations
from journal entries; Label salient physical and human features
along the route |
Use the “Draw”
tool and latitude/longitude coordinates to draw escape route; Print
final map. |
Immigration: Destination
- New York City
Overview - Another
successful module we created deals with immigration at the turn of the
20th century. Between 1870 and 1915, 25 million Russians, Italians, and
immigrants from other European nations flooded into the United States.
They came in hopes of finding a new life of freedom and prosperity, and
they met both opportunity and hardship. For many immigrants, their first
steps into the United States were taken at Ellis Island. In fact from
1892-1924, as many as 1000 people per day passed through the immigration
checkpoints there to begin a new life in the United States. Many of these
new immigrants left Ellis Island and settled in nearby New York City.
Students first completed
an in-class lesson on the flood of “New Immigrants” who
emigrated to the United States, and particularly to New York City, from
Eastern and Southern Europe. This module logically followed the module
on the Underground Railroad, and the skills needed to do this module
drew on skills already developed (at least to a minimal degree) from
the earlier unit.
Following the introductory
lesson, students explored various religious, political, and economic
factors that pushed people from their homelands during this era. Students
then analyzed the factors that pulled people to the United States -
the democratic values and economic opportunities - and the ways in which
these factors sustained new arrivals through the hardships that they
inevitably encountered here. In addition, students evaluated the impact
that these newcomers had on the landscape of early urban America by
conducting an examination of ethnic settlement patterns in New York
City. These ideas were illustrated with authentic representative case
studies from particular ethnic and religious groups, period photographs,
interactive web sites, and a video that dramatized the life story of
one adolescent immigrant boy from Poland.
The GIS activity began by
supplying each student with a fictitious immigrant character identity,
including his/her name, religion, and country of origin. Each student
then had to generate three GIS maps related to the fictitious character’s
travels to and settlement in New York City. The three maps illustrate
(1) the immigrant character’s point of origin and subsequent journey
to the New World, (2) downstate New York counties and their proximity
to Manhattan and Ellis Island, and (3) New York City ethnic neighborhood
boundaries in 1910 with the fictitious immigrant’s new address
shown on the map. Students again used ArcView 3.2, the GIS program owned
by the school, to create these maps.
Table 2 - GIS
& Immigration
| |
Description
|
Goals/Objectives
|
GIS skill level
|
| Map 1 |
Journey
to America |
Understand
the distances traveled by immigrants from point of origin to NY
City; understand time it took to travel. |
Beginner -
Carry over skills learned in basic Underground Railroad project |
| Map 2 |
Learning Downstate |
Employ fundamental place-name
geography to help upstate students learn the counties that make up
downstate. |
Advanced Beginner -
manipulation of drawing tools and symbols window |
| Map 3 |
Ethnic Neighborhoods |
Demonstrate potential
problems with proximity between ethnic groups; Understand settlement
patterns by ethnicity |
Intermediate - Incorporates
work with Census Bureau’s TIGER files |
|
