Mapping Black Settlement and Dispossession in Central Texas: Adventures in HGIS

Jaden McCree, University of Texas
Asher Atkins, University of Texas, Austin

This presentation describes an ongoing research project housed at the Institute for Research and Policy in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin that is using GIS to map a complete set of historical census records of individual households (1850-1950) for Travis and Bastrop Counties to trace the patterns of Black settlement and dispossession in Central Texas. Partnering with several organizations of descendants of area Freedom Colonies, the research is part of a public history project to recover, document, and commemorate historical Black presence in Central Texas and to document Black dispossession over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, through racist policies and processes such as formal segregation, redlining, eminent domain/urban renewal, and gentrification. In addition to describing the project, this presentation will discuss some of the obstacles the team has faced processing these large data sets from historical records (many handwritten) and mapping them digitally.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 182. Geographies of Racialized Dispossession