Digital Project: Unearthing the Weeping Time

Michael Page, Kwesi Degraft-Hanson and Kyle Thayer recently discussed their collaborative project, Unearthing the Weeping Time: Savannah's Ten Broeck Race Course and 1859 Slave Sale, that utilizes library resources and ties humanistic inquiry with geographic investigation, mapping, and 3D technology http://southernspaces.org/2010/unearthing-weeping-time-savannahs-ten-broeck-race-course-and-1859-slave-sale

In 1859, one of the largest slave sales in U.S. history took place at the Ten Broeck Race Course, now an obscured landscape, on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia. 436 enslaved persons from the Butler plantations near Darien were sold in an event remembered as "The Weeping Time. 9" Parents were separated from children, and betrothed from each other.

Despite the prevalence of historic monuments in the U.S. South, memorials to slavery are rare or recent arrivals. Not until 2008 did the city of Savannah and the Georgia Historical Society place a marker near the site of the sale. In this essay, Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson examines how this once hidden landscape can be re-imagined into Savannah's historic memory through archival research, oral history, physical observations of the landscape, and the art of mapmaking.

Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson, Michael Page, and Kyle Thayer, Superimposition: Re-imaged Ten Broeck Race Course on 2007 aerial photo of site, looking northeast, Savannah, Georgia, 2010.

Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson, Michael Page, and Kyle Thayer, Detail showing room under grandstands where 1859 slave sale was conducted, re-imaged Ten Broeck Race Course grandstand on 2007 aerial photo of site, Savannah, Georgia, 2010.

Blog entry submitted by Kim Collins for Michael Page, 3/7, 2011