Goin' North is a digital history project that documents the experiences of Black Americans who migrated from the American South to Philadelphia during the First Great Migration. As noted on the project's homepage, the African-American population of Philadelphia soared from 85,000 to 220,000 between 1910 and 1930. During the 1980s, Charles Hardy conducted a series of oral history interviews with individuals who migrated to Philadelphia during this time. These interviews were the basis of his radio documentary "Goin' North: Tales of the Great Migration." Thirty years later, Hardy and Janneken Smucker teamed up to teach the class "Digital Storytelling and the Great Migration to Philadelphia" at West Chester University. During this course, students edited and indexed Hardy's interviews and created an extensive digital archive consisting of "more than 400 images, newspaper articles, and other sources from national and regional collections, including previously unpublished images and ephemera from the Charles Blockson Afro-American Collection and Special Collections at Temple University Libraries and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania." In addition, these students created a series of "digital stories" (using tools including ArcGIS and Atavist) that capture the experiences of those who participated in the Great Migration. Goin' North offers a rich resource for students and instructors of U.S. History.
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