The Context

As I was (somewhat blindly) perusing the Library of Congress prints and photographs database, I came across a collection¹ of maps showing various demographic data about African Americans living in Georgia around the year 1900. The first map I came across (Figure 1) initially caught my attention because of a striking similarity to a source we looked at in class. Have you guessed what yet?

Figure 1. The very first map I came across. Look familiar?

Yeah. It’s George Pullen Jackson’s book titled “White and Negro Spirituals: Their Life Span and Kinship².” More on that later. I decided to look at this collection of maps and the more I read about them, the more interested I became. Continue reading →