The project generated the image above using Palladio, a geographic digital tool, to understand the relationships between the starting and ending points of runaway slaves’ routes. The project depended on jailers’ notices for more accurate destinations because there were limited information from the runaway slave advertisements.
One node represents the location of the reported slave owner, and the other node connected by the edge is the location of the county jail. The edge is the path traveled by the runaway slaves from one place to the place where they were held captive. Although the map is a bit hard to understand, the shaded circles illustrates the frequency of each location in the data.
Palladio provided a few features and a user-friendly interface at the time of this project. As a result, there was no interactive mode with the nodes and paths. There could have been arrows for directions and labels of the places to provide a clearer picture and better argument.
The bigger circles (nodes) could have been the locations of the jails. It’s interesting to see a node branching out in two directions. This divergence could indicate a story of persistence and bravery in fighting for freedom and human rights.
A more discernible pattern appears when comparing the start and end points of the jailer’s notices in Texas. The map indicates the runaway slaves were heading southwest (toward Mexico) in Texas. The shape is surprising because most people associate free states in the north. The delineation raises the question of why the runaway slaves sought refuge in Mexico, other southwest regions, and possibly South America.
In addition to using Palladio to map points of the runaway slaves’ paths, the project also uses Voyant, a digital text-mining tool, to explore and raise questions related to the Texas runaway ads. Voyant is a beneficial tool for DH projects because it allows for text analysis of extensive document collections.
