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White backlash is the immediate, violent response of some white people to the actual and perceived racial and educational progress of oppressed groups. In this paper, we take a historical detour to map this phenomenon, specifically in the history of K-12 Black education. We demonstrate that the current state of education is not an exceptional moment, but part of a long genealogy of anti-Black educational violence and white backlash. Yet, we suggest that operating from an understanding of the inevitability and imminence of white backlash offers necessary tools in the continued fight for liberatory Black educational futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context: Consideration of historical maps for ecological research requires a bidirectional understanding of human-nature relationships. We investigated shifting environmental values, as they emerge from historical maps of the American Southeast through the eighteenth century, with an interdisciplinary approach combining epistemologies from ecology, anthropology, and history. Objectives: Our objectives were to investigate the diversity of different land use annotations in map notations, contextualize these notations within existing knowledge of how power relations shape environmental attitudes and values, and interpret what their representations suggest about human attitudes toward the land. Methods: We selected 14 maps created between 1711 and 1773. We georeferenced the corpus in ArcGIS Pro. We identified emergent map themes with MAXQDA. We investigated the resulting patterns within and across the corpus in light of the context and purpose of the maps in R. Results: Maps reveal the values held by the colonizers towards various aspects of the land. Natural features are emphasized for their perceived value in direct use. Shifts in the balance between managed/built land and natural land indicate changes in the colonization agenda, going from depicting a well-equipped infrastructure for initial settlers, to emphasizing the potential for resource extraction. Conclusions: Our study shows how the perception of environmental values changes depending on time period, power structures, and agenda. An interdisciplinary approach, which considers the social aspects alongside the ecological ones, can provide a holistic understanding of these dynamics and help us better understand how humans perceive their presence and role in the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historic Sanborn fire insurance maps of cities in the United States are utilized extensively for comprehending past built environments and evaluating potential environmental risks. While previous research in the spatial humanities has explored diverse contemporary applications for these maps, there has been limited attention devoted to the evolution of Sanborn fire insurance maps over their nearly century-long production history. This study delves into the components of fire insurance maps produced by the Sanborn Map Company, shedding light on their varying formats, scales, and annotations, discussing how they have changed over time. The paper also examines the map correction process and identifies potential alternative sources for accessing fire insurance maps. Additionally, the diverse nature of these maps as source materials is contemplated, emphasizing the valuable insights that can be gained by critically analyzing the construction of Sanborn fire insurance maps. Given the significant reliance of numerous spatial humanities projects on these historic maps, particularly those focused on urban areas, this paper provides important contextualization of this source of geospatial information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systemic racism, which exists when minorities experience harmful outcomes from implicit or explicit bias, has recently been a much-discussed phenomenon. Systemic racism may exist, even though explicit bias is mostly illegal, because of structures of policy or behavior that generate deleterious outcomes. Bank financing for housing purchase or improvement is one such structure. An overtly discriminatory policy facilitated by an agency of the United States government, "redlining" on "residential security maps" depicted supposedly high-risk lending areas in red. These historical maps have led to low housing values today in formerly redlined areas. Even though the practice has been illegal for decades, traditional lenders nowadays decline loans in those areas because they are too small to be profitable. A system dynamics model shows the systemic structure of this situation. The model simulates various policies for its solution. Robust (but expensive) policies involve subsidies to lenders or lending from governments or nonprofits. Less robust but potentially cheaper policy would require lenders to make small loans anyway. Any of these policies would help break the adverse reinforcing loop of declining housing, inability to borrow to improve the housing, and further housing decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An early crop classification method is functionally required in a near-real-time crop-yield prediction system, especially for upland crops. This study proposes methods to estimate the mixed-pixel ratio of corn, soybean, and other classes within a low-resolution MODIS pixel by coupling MODIS-derived crop phenology information and the past Cropland Data Layer in a random-forest regression algorithm. Verification of the classification accuracy was conducted for the Midwestern United States. The following conclusions are drawn: The use of the random-forest algorithm is effective in estimating the mixed-pixel ratio, which leads to stable classification accuracy; the fusion of historical data and MODIS-derived crop phenology information provides much better crop classification accuracy than when these are used individually; and the input of a longer MODIS data period can improve classification accuracy, especially after day of year 279, because of improved estimation accuracy for the soybean emergence date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Marsh shorelines are retreating rapidly in coastal Louisiana, largely driven by wind waves attacking the marsh edge. The amount of wave power hitting the marsh is a major predictor for marsh retreat rates; however, marsh erodibility (erosion rate per unit of wave power) has a large spatial variability. Identifying the causes of this variability is essential to obtain more reliable predictions and to optimize marsh protection strategies. Here we investigate marsh edge erosion in a small (~3 km2) bay within Barataria Bay, LA, USA. Long-term (~140 years) erosion data and short term (~1 year) field measurements show that, for the same wave power, north-facing marsh edges erode twice as fast as south-facing marsh edges. A possible explanation might reside in the peculiar hydrodynamics of coastal Louisiana, where northerly winds are associated with low water levels and southerly winds are associated with high water levels. This causes south-facing shores to experience high water levels when being impacted by waves and north-facing shore to experience low water levels when being impacted by waves, which could subsequently affect marsh edge erosion in three different ways. First, south-facing shores experience a higher frequency of wave overshooting, which limits the ability of waves to cause erosion. Second, north-facing shores experience a higher frequency of waves impacting the highly erodible soil below the root mat, thus undercutting the marsh. Third, south-facing marsh edges have a higher elevation and a higher soil shear strength in the root layer (0–20 cm depth), likely because these shores receive more sediment during wave events. These three processes were combined into a single empirical correction to represent effective marsh erodibility and the correction was used in a 2D model of marsh edge retreat. The model accurately predicts marsh edge erosion and can be used to determine whether historical marsh loss was due to edge erosion or to other processes, such as ponding or drowning. Highlights • Wind direction and speed drive large water level changes in coastal Louisiana. • Changes in water level drive different erosion mechanisms of the marsh edge. • We developed an empirical anisotropic correction for a 2D marsh retreat model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines different advantages and problems which arose when the authors combined humanistic and data-driven research methods by studying shorelines of the Great Lakes represented in historical maps. The authors discuss the value and epistemological restrictions of using computational and quantitative methods in case of eighteenth-century cartography.

But along the way, Walker recounts the political history of bias against certain religious minorities in a way that underscores the relevance of the courts to the expression of social hostility. Religious garb-wearing teachers are not radically different from anyone else in their profession, but perhaps more than ever, religion and secularity find themselves at the center of the debates about national identity. First Amendment and State Bans on Teachers' Religious Garb: Analyzing the Historic Origins of Contemporary Legal Challenges in the United States. [Extracted from the article]

Transportation infrastructure, such as road or railroad networks, represent a fundamental component of our civilization. For sustainable planning and informed decision making, a thorough understanding of the long-term evolution of transportation infrastructure such as road networks is crucial. However, spatially explicit, multi-temporal road network data covering large spatial extents are scarce and rarely available prior to the 2000s. Herein, we propose a framework that employs increasingly available scanned and georeferenced historical map series to reconstruct past road networks, by integrating abundant, contemporary road network data and color information extracted from historical maps. Specifically, our method uses contemporary road segments as analytical units and extracts historical roads by inferring their existence in historical map series based on image processing and clustering techniques. We tested our method on over 300,000 road segments representing more than 50,000 km of the road network in the United States, extending across three study areas that cover 42 historical topographic map sheets dated between 1890 and 1950. We evaluated our approach by comparison to other historical datasets and against manually created reference data, achieving F-1 scores of up to 0.95, and showed that the extracted road network statistics are highly plausible over time, i.e., following general growth patterns. We demonstrated that contemporary geospatial data integrated with information extracted from historical map series open up new avenues for the quantitative analysis of long-term urbanization processes and landscape changes far beyond the era of operational remote sensing and digital cartography. [Display omitted] • Knowledge on the long-term road network evolution is limited due to a lack of data. • Our proposed method extracts past road networks from historical maps automatically. • We integrate contemporary road data, image analysis and unsupervised classification. • We test our method for 50,000 km roads on 42 historical maps in the US since 1890. • The extracted, historical urban and rural roads are highly accurate and plausible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American history demands to be mapped. The stories of exploration, the colonies, the Louisiana Purchase, and so on are incomplete without maps to locate historical places, events, and conflicts. Yet maps can do more for the history teacher than simply illustrating what happened where or what territory was acquired when. Maps also provide clues about how the people of the past understood their world. How did early European explorers perceive the land to which they sailed? What did Thomas Jefferson know about the territory purchased by the United States in 1803? The prevalence of todays digital maps makes it easy to forget that there was a time when detailed geographic information was not available. Neither Columbus nor Jefferson had GoogleEarth to answer his geographic questions. Moreover, it was common for the maps that did exist to be inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading. The acquisition of geographical knowledge was a cumbersome process filled with myths, mistakes, and lies. There are numerous examples of historical maps that can aid in students' comprehension of the geography of the past. This article presents three maps that illuminate early American history and three strategies for teaching with historical maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article has a dual purpose. The first is to pay tribute to the work of Richard Selleck and Geoffrey Sherington; the second to argue that historians of education can make substantial contributions to current and future educational policy and practice by identifying what Ravitch has called ‘time-tested truths’. The nature and purpose of historical study are examined with particular reference to education and to making maps of the past. Examples are provided of the application of historical perspectives to contemporary education issues in 1985 and 1996. The final section draws upon an analysis by leading historians in the USA of the failures of school reform, and a research project into the establishment, nature and likely fate of the Department for Education and Employment in the UK. The basic conclusion is that the development of the field of educational administration requires both specialist historical studies and those informed by a broader understanding of educational and human perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers information on the Tlingit Map of 1869. It states that the map was a cartographic work drawn by Kohklux or Shotridge and his two wives given to George Davidson of the U.S. Coast Survey that portrays the Chilkat Tlingit. It mentions that Davidson visit the area to examine the ebb and flow of tides, and the earth's magnetic field, and the solar eclipses to understand the earthly phenomena and to map the coasts of the U.S. concerning ship navigation in American waters. INSETS: LOUIS SHOTRIDGE AND THE PENN MUSEUM;THE GHOST OF COURAGEOUS ADVENTURER.

Researchers of our past have long used historical maps to place events and to uncover the physical form of an area. A series of maps may be employed to understand a region beyond the extent of a single map. However, rarely are these maps included in publications of research findings. At best, a modern cartographic reproduction will be created to depict the research area. Our maps, created for a historical atlas of Sandwich, Ontario, Canada, are noteworthy for their use of original historical maps in a mosaic to recreate the past. Our objective was to overcome the international boundary between Canada and the United States, a borderland that has succumbed to vast generalizations on the part of the cartographers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through the use of ArcGIS, we georectified and fixed the extent of our maps, creating a series of maps that depict the changing urban growth of Sandwich over 200 years. This methodology can be extended to allow for the cartographic visualization of economic, political, social and spatial relationships that exist beyond a single map. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the spatial or geographical dependence of income inequality and regional inequality is crucial in the study of inequality. This paper employs a multi-scale, multi-mechanism framework to map and analyze historical patterns of regional and income inequality in the United States (US) by using state and regional panel data spanning over a century. To explore the patterns systematically and see the role of spatial partitioning, we organize the data around several established geographical partitions before conducting various geographical information system (GIS) analyses and statistical techniques. We also investigate the spatial dependence of income inequality and regional inequality. We find that spatial autocorrelation exists for both types of inequality in the US. However, the magnitude of spatial dependence for regional inequality is declining whereas it is volatile for income inequality over time. While income inequality has been at its peak in the most recent decades, we also notice that regional inequality is at its lowest point. As for the choice of partitioning, we observe that within inequality dominates for Census Divisions and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) regions. Conversely, we see that between inequality overall contributes the most to the inequality among Census Regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several information resources on Native Americans for teachers in elementary schools. The oral traditions is one source which relates oral histories, songs, and ceremonial chants. Legends should be considered too. Maps are also perfect sources in learning Native homelands. Government documents can also illustrate Native American views. Photographs of Native Americans with British Americans can be viewed in the Internet and the traditional tribal records.

Focuses on the use of geographic information systems (GIS) to test the applicability of concepts associated with large cities to two medium-sized American cities of the mid-nineteenth century. Limitations of GIS techniques in urban historical settings; Differences in the residential patterns discovered between Newport and Alexandria; Evidences supporting the variation in the distribution of specific groups within the city.

The historical map was a latecomer in the United States, the initial incentive stemming from Francis A. Walker's areal statistical maps in the Census Bureau's Statistical Atlas (1874) and its more notable successor, Scribner's Statistical Atlas of the United States (1883) with historical maps, demographic and political. Fortuitously this achievement was coeval with the emergence of history as a professional discipline, the teaching of American history, and the use of maps in textbooks. Prof. Albert Bushnell Hart of Harvard University became the leading advocate of correlating history with geography and of teaching history with the aid of maps. His Epoch Maps Illustrating American History (1891), the protoatlas on this subject, based upon primary sources, was followed by his more comprehensive American History Atlas (1918). Its only competitor was William R. Shepherd's Historical Atlas (1911), and later editions, containing a section on American history. Hart had long since expressed the great need for an elaborate historical atlas of North America, ultimately met by Paullin and Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States (1932), brainchild of J. Franklin Jameson and twenty years in the making. Other atlases of American history, varying in quality, have followed but have not replaced Paullin and Wright. The Atlas of Early American History…1760–1790 (1976) filled the need for more detailed treatment of the Revolutionary Era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1930s United States, urban neighborhoods were graded on their desirability for investment (often based on race), a process known as "redlining." This study examined how historical redlining relates to current disparities in an important health determinant: tobacco retailer density. Analyses were conducted for thirteen Ohio cities using negative binomial models that accounted for retailer spatial dependence and controlled for present-day sociodemographic characteristics. Findings indicated that as grades increased from "Best" to "Still Desirable" to "Definitely Declining" and "Hazardous," retailer density increased monotonically. These results highlight the persisting impacts of redlining and how disparities, once intentionally created, can be perpetuated over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews the web site Historical Maps Online from the University of Illinois Library and Press.