In addition to the commemorations of the Centennial of the Great War that have been occurring throughout the city this past year, another related anniversary is almost upon Philadelphia. In 1916, in large part because of the war-related defense boom in Northern and Western cities, one of the largest migrations within the United States began. Known as the Great Migration, this demographic shift involved over six million Blacks leaving the rural South. The magnitude of this shift can hardly be overstated, and Philadelphia in particular, was transformed. The Black population grew by more than 50% between 1910 and 1920.
Goin’ North, a digital oral history project, commemorates the Great Migration and explores its impact on the Black community of Philadelphia. The project is based on oral histories conducted by Charles Hardy, in conjunction with the Philadelphia History Museum, in the 1980s with both Southern migrants and Black Philadelphians. Hardy initially used the interviews for a radio series, “Goin’ North: Tales of the Great Migration” and a concomitant Philadelphia Daily News educational supplement.
Twenty-one students working with Hardy and Janneken Smucker at West Chester University have built a project that is not only a model for other smaller digital humanities programs to follow, but also an invaluable contribution to the digital history of Philadelphia. Using a variety of off-the-shelf platforms, Goin’ North offers the public a wide range of ways to interact with fifteen of the oral histories through biographies, audio clips, videos, maps, and digital stories.
Digitally augmented oral histories. Working with OHMS (Oral History Metadata Syncronizer) the original oral history tapes, which are held by the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky, have been substantially enhanced by extensive metadata and contextualization. Students created over 1000 keywords to tag content in the interviews, used GPS to identify locations, and created links to archival materials and external websites.
Digitized archives Three hundred and eighty three photographs, newspaper articles, documents, and ephemera have been entered into Omeka, an archival and exhibit platform, along with corresponding metadata. These items augment the narratives of the oral histories by providing materials from both Philadelphia archives and repositories across the country that contextualize the Great Migration in Philadelphia.
Digital storytelling In addition to brief biographical sketches about fifteen of the oral history narrators, six complete stories explore the Great Migration from a wide range of perspectives. Tags allow the user to identify common themes across individual lives, such as the four women who performed domestic work. A HistoryPin Map explores routes taken by two families to the North, while Creativist is used to document the reception of these newcomers by residents of Philadelphia’s established black community.
Goin’ North is a sheer delight to explore, but it also offers a wealth of information that will be useful to both researchers as well as teachers. In my own work on Philadelphia in the war years, I have been searching for resources about African American veterans. Using keyword tags I quickly located Arthur Dingle.
The digital story, “A Veteran of the Great War and The Great Migration” interweaves quotes from Dingle’s oral history with of seventeen different archival items to provide a rich depiction of this “distinguished veteran of the First World War.
Goin’ North is an exemplary project in its use of digital platforms to bring earlier historical technologies into the 21st century. As an oral historian, I’m well aware of just how many taped interviews languish in archives, seldom listened to and never transcribed. The work Hardy, Smucker, and the West Chester University students have done to creatively re-envision ways of presenting oral histories to the public is truly remarkable. Smucker and Hardy will continue to teach “Digital Storytelling and the Great Migration to Philadelphia” and I look forward to seeing what new stories students tell with the remaining interviews.