This site will feature a range of local history projects created with my students at Armstrong State University. At present, my plan is to pursue three initial projects. For the first, students will select public domain historic photographs of Savannah and display them in curated collections. In the second, working with University Archivist Caroline Hopkinson, they will scan copies of the university newspaper, The Inkwell, which began publication in 1935. Full scans will be displayed at Archive.org, while students will present online interpretive thematic pieces based on selected articles.

The most significant initial project intersects with my own research on urban development, historic preservation, and segregation by race and class. We will present online the infamous “redlining” maps of Georgia cities (Savannah, Macon, Augusta, Columbus, and Atlanta) created by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation in the 1930s, along with the “survey data” that was used to determine lending priorities. We will also provide contextual information to help site visitors understand the cities from a historical perspective. This will involve substantial work with additional government documents (such as the housing monographs produced by the FHA and federal census data), photographs, literature, as well as engagement with relevant existing scholarship. I hope that these initial forays into digital history will serve as a springboard to an ongoing project focused on showcasing the development of Georgia’s cities.

Source: Studying Savannah and Beyond