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Quantifying History

Michael Corey, University of Minnesota

Andrew Ba Tran, Washington Post

Joyce Lee, Washington Post

Alexia Fernández Campbell | Bloomberg Law News

Pratheek Rebala, ProPublica

Jennifer LaFleur, Moderator

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Michael Corey, Technical Lead

University of Minnesota Libraries

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@MappingPrejudice

/MappingPrejudice

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Warning

Racist and outdated language coming in next slides

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Racial covenant

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Why should we still care?

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Source: Albert Shanker Institute

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75%

33%

Twin Cities metro home ownership

Largest gap in the country

Nationwide: Black home ownership about the same as 1968

White families

Black families

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Covenanted homes:

15% more than non-covenanted

Redlined homes:

25% less than

median value

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Mapping Process

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Digitized Docs

Digitized Map

Zooniverse

Optical Character Recognition

Text

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Stats to date

~14 million pages processed across 11 counties

60,000+ covenants mapped

11,000 volunteers

52,000 volunteer hours

In conversation with 30+ counties across 10 states + DC

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Why crowdsourcing?

It’s more accurate
We don’t have 300 graduate assistants
We do have 11,000+ volunteers
Milwaukee: 200 - 700 transcriptions per day
Peak in 2020: ~2,000 per day

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“The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.,” 1953

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“The process is the product”

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The process is the product

"This is super tough to read. It makes me emotional. And, it counters that narrative that racism is 'imagined'

or 'doesn't exist'."

One volunteer stated that it was revelatory, so matter of fact, that it countered the narrative of, "...just pull yourself up

by your bootstraps."

"I wasn't surprised that it happened, but to actually see it

was eye opening"

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And this led us to what is now our #1 guiding principle: The Process is the Product
When we started, we assumed that getting to the finished map was the goal.
And we have seen that the map has been transformational in driving very real policy changes.
But our volunteers and other community members have taught us that just mapping covenants is not the real goal.
The real goal and the secret to Mapping Prejudice’s success is the experience of absorbing new information together, talking about that, and that is what opens people to new possibilities for reparative change.
Our volunteers believe strongly – and correctly – that they are owners of this data and this project, and they also show up at meetings and say hey, I learned about this stuff that went down in my neighborhood, and I think it’s time we do things differently and try to fix some of that

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How we map matters

How will this map be received? And what does that mean for how we map?

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Covenants per capita in Twin Cities metro

But how are you accounting for history of development?

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Property identification is hard (Pls slow your LLM roll)

What is the lot, block, and addition?
Many possible answers
Only one is correct, requires context and additional research
Each individual property really matters
Statistically good is not good enough

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We’re looking for software contractors!

Help us improve “The Deed Machine”

Dev ops: AWS + Terraform
Python/Django
Front-end

corey101@umn.edu,

Or come say hi!

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SMITHSONIAN HUMAN REMAINS

30,700

80+

4,068

THE COLLECTION

SETS OF HUMAN REMAINS

COUNTRIES

SETS OF HUMAN REMAINS RETURNED

(+2,254 offered for return)

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MARY SARA

THE COLLECTION

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Pinpoint

Handwriting recognition!

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ENTITY EXTRACTION

FOR FREE!

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Google Document AI

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SEARCHABLE DATABASE

THE COLLECTION

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STUDENT DEATHS, BURIAL SITES

150

55,000

20,000

318,00

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400,000+

BOARDING SCHOOLS

GRAVES FOUND NEAR SCHOOLS

SCRAPED MAPS

FOIA’D RECORDS

DETAILS SCRAPED FROM FINDAGRAVE

GOOGLE PINPOINT ACCOUNTS

RECORDS PROCESSED

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GENOA INDIAN SCHOOL

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EKLUTNA INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL

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SANTEE NORMAL TRAINING SCHOOL

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USGS NATIONAL MAP

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Special Field Order No. 15

The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns river, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the [freedmen] now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.

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Freedmen’s Bureau

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Freedmen’s Bureau

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Freedmen’s Bureau

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Freedmen’s Bureau

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Did freedmen get to keep the land they were given?

Semantic Search

It is reported that many freedmen refuse to enter into contracts for labor, because they believe that farms will be given them by the U. S. Government. If any do thus believe, they have no reason for their belief. The Government owns no lands in this State. It therefore can give away none. Freedmen can obtain farms with the money which they have earned by their labor. Every one therefore should work diligently, and carefully save his wages, till he may be able to buy land, and possess his own home.

I am beset every day by Freedmen, who are living on this Island, from St. Catherine and other Islands near it in the State of Georgia, wanting to go back to their homes. These Freed people have been ordered off the Lands on which they have been working and therefore have no where to stay. I told them than the land in that state might be given to their former owners they say that have rather be there as they have nother here that they can do-can not rent land, they say. Capt. I think it would be economy for the Bureau to send these people home, or they will have to be taken care of this Spring.

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Describe and Search

“Lists with Names”

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Search by description

“Documents with tables”

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Finding Similar Documents

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Structured prompting

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freedmen.motherjones.com

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Genealogy as Journalism

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Multi Generational Stories

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Searching for the 40 Acres

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The Landings

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Working with public historians & community

TELL US WHEN YOUR STORIES RUN
From a historian’s perspective: You don’t need to prove racism exists
Deep community and historian connections give your work credibility
Your level of trust is likely starting at 0. Journalism’s traditional practices are what got you there.
These should be your collaborators, not your sources

Crediting generously is free
But it’s also time to start paying people

What is in it for your collaborators?

Start by asking what they would like out of this work
Before you have decided what you will do
Community advisory board?

What harmful practices will your org commit to changing?

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Thank you!

Presentation at:

bit.ly/NICARHIST25

Resource list:

z.umn.edu/NICARHIST25tips

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