Integrating Spatial Mapping with Civil Rights History in Metropolitan Connecticut

FAIN: RF-50018-10

University of Connecticut (Storrs, CT 06269-9000)
Michael Robert Howser (Project Director: September 2009 to June 2012)

For Americans living in cities and suburbs, our histories are connected by the very lines that separate us. We are shaped by a past in which real estate agents maintained the "color line," mortgage lenders mapped out "redlining," and elected officials drew zoning and attendance boundary lines around private homes and public schools. Families attempted to move up, over, or around these lines, while civil rights activists tried to redraw or erase them altogether. This research project employs historical GIS (geographical information system) mapping to extend U.S. civil rights history from the cities to the suburbs. It analyzes the spatial growth of racial and social class inequality -- and how activism evolved to keep pace with it -- through a case study of schooling and housing in metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut during the twentieth century.