Mapping
Freedom
Story: Ryan Hrobak | Photos: Cassandra Lanza
Trading grilled kielbasa for fried catfish, a junior computer science major, mathematics minor, Wimmer Scholar, and athlete in both cross country and track from Marysville, Pennsylvania, spent her summer participating in the Mapping Freedom project at the University of Southern Mississippi. The Mapping Freedom project is a prestigious NSF-Funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU), giving competitively selected undergraduates the opportunity to conduct graduate-level research and prepare them for further studies.
The Mapping Freedom REU focuses on digitally mapping the process of emancipation in Mississippi during the Civil War through Reconstruction. Cassy applied for this research opportunity because it dovetailed with her studies at Saint Vincent. “I wanted to do something with computer science. This was unique because it married computer science to the humanities, which seemed like an extension of our liberal arts and sciences
education at Saint Vincent.” Cassy highlighted a class that she took at Saint Vincent called “The Religious and Ethical Thought of Martin Luther King, Jr.” as a major reason for pursuing the Mapping Freedom REU. “I wrote about the course in my application essay. Even though the time period and purpose of the course are different from the Mapping Freedom REU, I thought that this REU would give me the opportunity to build upon our course material and interact with it in a new way.”
The focus of Cassy’s research involved the practice of impressment during the Civil War. “In some ways,” noted Cassy, “desperation fueled the Confederacy’s unpopular policies, and impressment was one such policy. Basically, the Confederate government resorted to impressment of enslaved persons to meet their increasing labor needs. Officials would forcefully relocate enslaved individuals from privately-owned plantations to industrial sites, like railroads or military fortifications. It was an inherently violent process. Both enslaved persons and enslavers opposed it.”
Cassy studied a set of approximately 10,000 letters from the time of Civil War through Reconstruction written mostly by citizens of Mississippi to their governor. The letters demonstrated widespread opposition to impressment. Her work resulted in a research paper, an interactive digital map, and a symposium presentation related to her research.
From analyzing these letters, Cassy identified five basic reasons for Mississippians’ opposition to impressment: mistreatment of slaves subject to impressment, impressed slaves fleeing to the Union army or leaving Mississippi, crops suffering for lack of labor, general opposition to impressment, and requests for the Confederacy to return impressed slaves. Cassy highlighted the irony of these circumstances. “While the Confederacy fought to maintain the institution of slavery, the Confederacy itself contributed to slavery’s downfall by impressing slaves in support of its cause.”
Reflecting on her research experience, Cassy commented on her growth as a researcher and scholar: “I’d never done a research project or paper at this level. The REU instructors really tried to teach us how to do graduate-level work, and they challenged us to do it. We attended lectures on a wide variety of topics, such as history, archiving, digitization, computer science, geography, visualization, and data analysis. We also participated in seminars on how to do research, how to read for research, how to handle the workload, how to write a research paper for publication, and a variety of other topics related to graduate-level study.”
“Saint Vincent’s liberal arts curriculum teaches me how to apply what I’m learning, why learning is important, why what I’m learning is important, and how what I’m learning is integral to my whole education.”
Cassy also learned about the field of digital humanities and gained insight into why it’s important. “Digital preservation and digitization are critical to keeping our resources alive for the future. Thinking about myself as part of this long tradition of archiving was really interesting and moving for me.”
She explained that the other REU participants came from a wide range of academic disciplines. This interdisciplinary dynamic resonated with Cassy’s experience in Saint Vincent’s liberal arts core curriculum. “A real education goes beyond just learning one subject. Our liberal arts curriculum teaches me how to apply what I’m learning, why learning is important, why what I’m learning is important, and how what I’m learning is integral to my whole education,” she explained. “I’m learning how to write and how to communicate. And I’m situating all of this within the broader context of my life.”
Cassy said that both her studies at Saint Vincent and her experience in the Mapping Freedom REU have changed her understanding of human knowledge. “I used to think of knowledge as having discrete domains. Mathematics was one thing. English was another. History was another. But our education at Saint Vincent has taught me that nothing is so discrete, that things are actually interconnected, and that they’re integrated into a broader human context.”
The Mapping Freedom REU also helped Cassy deepen her engagement with the Benedictine tradition. “The REU helped me put Benedictine ideals into practice. The two prongs of digital humanities—preservation and analysis—require practices that are rooted in the Benedictine tradition.
Officials would forcefully relocate enslaved individuals from privately-owned plantations to industrial sites, like railroads.
“Careful stewardship is essential in the practice of archiving and preserving the histories of past and present,” said Cassy. But humility and hospitality resonated deeply with her while she carried out her work.
“We had a lecture from a historian at Southern Mississippi on the importance of writing about history. He talked about how we have a responsibility to the people that we’re writing about. Very often, we’re writing about people whose history hasn’t been written about fairly or honestly. Sometimes their history has even been ignored. We have a responsibility to these people to capture their history accurately.”
This is where Cassy saw the connection to humility and hospitality. “We need to have the humility to let go of our own egos when considering and telling the histories of other people. We also need to have the hospitality to be open to those people and their stories. Ultimately, this requires a patient, stable, and obedient dedication to understanding other perspectives and representing them thoughtfully to the public.”
Cassy is glad to be back at Saint Vincent but laments the loss of Southern cooking. “I learned that I really like fried catfish. It tastes like the river, but in a good way.”