Harrisburg Historical: Developing a Digital Civil Rights Tour

The landing page of Harrisburg Historical, a collection of digital tours through the city.

What if there was a way to conveniently access a diverse array of histories surrounding the Pennsylvania capitol in the palm of your hand? This is the very goal of Harrisburg Historical, an upcoming website and mobile application that will tell Harrisburg’s story through informative tours of the city incorporating text, audio, and video content. The first project is a tour highlighting locations and individuals of significance in nineteenth and twentieth century struggles and triumphs toward civil rights. Harrisburg Historical is part of “The Chester Way,” an initiative launched by the T. Morris Chester Welcome Center at the McCormick Riverfront Library, Messiah University, and the Commonwealth Monument Project, with generous funding from the Messiah University’s Center for Public Humanities and a public humanities grant by the Council of Independent Colleges through the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. “The Chester Way,” named for Civil War journalist and civil rights advocate Thomas Morris Chester, seeks to showcase silenced stories of Harrisburg’s Black residents and the ways individuals and communities have fought against racial injustice in the city and beyond. The Harrisburg Historical Civil Rights Tour will contribute to this vision by showcasing the stories of reformers, including Chester, as they spoke out against oppressive structures and ushered in radical change in areas of education, politics, and social life.

This semester, our team of student researchers at Messiah continues the process of developing the tour. I am serving as lead editor, alongside writers Nik Lego, Elizabeth Movinsky, and Kyle Shively, and audio/video developer Keli Ganey. Through finalizing stories written by past writers Meredith Gardner and Rachel Petroziello, and writing original texts, we hope to have ten distinct stories ready to launch by December. So far, we’ve finalized one story, Rachel’s engaging exploration of the Lincoln Cemetery.

Topics we are researching include the Underground Railroad, historically Black cemeteries, educational reform, the City Beautiful movement, and racism in the 1920s. To find information, we are drawing primarily upon historical Harrisburg newspaper articles, memoirs, and previous research from projects such as One Hundred Voices and the Digital Harrisburg initiative. As we compile this information, the writing team develops brief, text-based stories linking each theme to a specific location in Harrisburg. Keli then edits and curates photographs, videos, and interview audio to accompany each story, creating cohesive, multimedia accounts.

To bring the stories to life, we are using a website and app platform called Curatescape. Combing Omeka and Esri Leaflet software, Curatescape allows us to anchor each stop on the Civil Rights Tour, with its corresponding media, to geographic coordinates on an interactive map. The final product will allow members of the public to scroll from location to location on their mobile device and follow the narrative by completing a walking or driving tour. Harrisburg Historical users, whether high school students or interested members of the public, will then be able to experience the lasting legacies of each location, and read about ways they can get involved in continued efforts for racial justice and reconciliation. Once completed, we will request review and feedback on the stories from our community partners, including Mr. Lenwood Sloan (the Commonwealth Monument Project, Executive Director), and Ms. Yvette Davis (Popel Shaw Center for Race and Ethnicity at Dickinson College, Director). Clearly, we still have much to do before our contribution to this project is complete. Nevertheless, I am excited to see where the project goes next, and the stories we uncover about race and place in Harrisburg.

Alex Shehigian is a senior at Messiah University. She is majoring in public history and minoring in digital public humanities. She is also an Archives Office Assistant at the Messiah University Archives and volunteers with the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association archives. You can learn more about her here.