transcript.txt

[00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000]   Part 1, Research. This is a guide to finding and gathering clues to places which have been
[00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:13.640]   erased. Neighborhoods and communities who were not included in archives during their
[00:00:13.640 --> 00:00:19.680]   time and whose traces we can find mostly through the in-between glimpses, the cracks and gaps,
[00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:26.160]   the unsaid and the hidden away. Most of what we find through this process is not the real
[00:00:26.160 --> 00:00:32.840]   story. It's the selective forgetting, overriding and reshaping of histories, despite which
[00:00:32.840 --> 00:00:39.560]   we will try to see people, their spaces and the things they cared about.
[00:00:39.560 --> 00:00:44.720]   It's the first part of an evolving guide to relational reconstruction, a set of practices
[00:00:44.720 --> 00:00:50.600]   for creating an immersive virtual or 3D reconstruction of an erased neighborhood such as the one
[00:00:50.600 --> 00:00:55.600]   I've begun to craft in the Seeing Providence Chinatown Project about the neighborhood which
[00:00:55.600 --> 00:01:02.600]   existed on Empire Street in Providence, Rhode Island until December of 1914.
[00:01:02.600 --> 00:01:16.960]   This project and the relational reconstruction methodology I envision is focused on memory,
[00:01:16.960 --> 00:01:22.820]   remembrance and personal relationships to histories. It's not a work of history or
[00:01:22.820 --> 00:01:27.760]   formal archiving, but a way for us to reckon with the past and its meanings to us today
[00:01:27.760 --> 00:01:33.160]   and in the future in personal terms. Think of this as a journey through these materials
[00:01:33.160 --> 00:01:38.080]   which you can chart with love, perhaps guiding your community around the hazards and pitfalls
[00:01:38.080 --> 00:01:43.880]   of the archival lens, to be close with, to share space with, histories and spaces which
[00:01:43.880 --> 00:01:50.080]   we often must glimpse through the cracks. It's a meditation, the searching. Handling
[00:01:50.080 --> 00:01:57.080]   these artifacts with tenderness, not picking them apart like meat from a bone or gems from
[00:01:57.080 --> 00:02:04.200]   the soil, gathering them together with gentle hands, healing yourself as you glimpse them,
[00:02:04.200 --> 00:02:11.320]   giving them recognition and rest.
[00:02:11.320 --> 00:02:18.840]   A note of caution. To this beginning to look through these histories, please take care
[00:02:18.840 --> 00:02:24.240]   of yourself. In this work you'll come across material which will be painful to read, including
[00:02:24.240 --> 00:02:30.400]   violence, but also the diminution of violence, even from present day historians and archivists.
[00:02:30.400 --> 00:02:36.760]   There will be people who don't understand this pain or how they can add to it.
[00:02:36.760 --> 00:02:42.600]   Take breaks and deep breaths. Listen to something calming. The kind of justice we seek in relational
[00:02:42.600 --> 00:02:47.480]   reconstruction is through remembrance and connection. It may be someone else's important
[00:02:47.480 --> 00:02:54.080]   work to hold themselves accountable for these acts. It may even be yours on another occasion.
[00:02:54.080 --> 00:02:58.520]   But our goal here and now is to see beyond those painful parts to try to connect with
[00:02:58.520 --> 00:03:03.480]   people's lives, people who might be your ancestors or who walked a path your ancestors
[00:03:03.480 --> 00:03:10.480]   would later.
[00:03:14.360 --> 00:03:20.480]   Looking for images. First, if you can, visit the place as it is today. It might be a virtual
[00:03:20.480 --> 00:03:27.480]   visit, a street view visit, or maybe a visit through scenes in a movie set in the place.
[00:03:27.480 --> 00:03:38.080]   Online image search. Searching for Providence Chinatown won't bring up many photos of what
[00:03:38.080 --> 00:03:45.080]   the neighborhood used to look like. Some show the area after Chinatown was destroyed. Many
[00:03:45.080 --> 00:03:52.520]   of the glimpses we can find of the neighborhood are incidental: in the background of photographs
[00:03:52.520 --> 00:03:57.440]   of other things. ‘Looking in the background’ is how I would describe my approach for many
[00:03:57.440 --> 00:04:04.440]   of the images I was able to find of Providence's Chinatown. See how in this image the same
[00:04:05.460 --> 00:04:10.100]   building to the left side, which on careful inspection has an awning labeled Oriental
[00:04:10.100 --> 00:04:15.900]   Restaurant, appears again in a second image from the Rhode Island State Archives, again
[00:04:15.900 --> 00:04:20.080]   in the background of a photograph of Central Baptist Church, with ladders leaning against
[00:04:20.080 --> 00:04:27.080]   it. In my experience using Google or DuckDuckGo image search is worthwhile, but it will take
[00:04:27.080 --> 00:04:32.560]   some patience and persistence. You can begin to develop a list of search terms to work
[00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:39.240]   from. Mine included some of the following. The last few are of small streets and alleys
[00:04:39.240 --> 00:04:46.240]   that no longer exist. These search terms can also work in the Library of Congress's various
[00:04:46.240 --> 00:04:52.880]   search systems such as the Prints and Photos Division Search. You may have to skim through
[00:04:52.880 --> 00:04:58.680]   hundreds of photos. Sanborn Maps were created by the Sanborn Insurance Company every few
[00:04:58.680 --> 00:05:04.720]   years for most cities since the late 1800s. These can provide detailed context for photographs
[00:05:04.720 --> 00:05:11.080]   and other records as well as addresses, details on entryways, and even staircases or roofing.
[00:05:11.080 --> 00:05:16.080]   The website cinematreasures.org is a surprisingly rich resource for tracking the history of
[00:05:16.080 --> 00:05:21.360]   old theaters, from construction dates to name changes to photographs and even dating images
[00:05:21.360 --> 00:05:28.360]   based on the posters of shows currently playing. So many pictures I found had no people in
[00:05:28.680 --> 00:05:35.000]   them, and those that did were often hard to place. Some were posed portraits or had blurry
[00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:41.960]   backgrounds. As you sift through these photos, keep in mind our goal to try to understand
[00:05:41.960 --> 00:05:47.040]   the neighborhood as it would have wanted to be remembered, not as a museum artifact or
[00:05:47.040 --> 00:05:54.040]   a long ago fable. I ask myself, what would people here have wanted for me as an Asian American
[00:05:55.280 --> 00:06:02.280]   living in 2023? Regular events and celebrations nearby can be useful search terms. Examples
[00:06:02.280 --> 00:06:07.880]   that helped in Providence Chinatown include Chinese New Year, while in Deadwood, South
[00:06:07.880 --> 00:06:12.500]   Dakota, Chinese Americans participated in town parades and competitions like the Hub
[00:06:12.500 --> 00:06:19.500]   and Hub Race on July 4, 1888, and are featured in several photographs of the event.
[00:06:19.500 --> 00:06:26.500]   Newspapers were, for me, the heaviest part of the research process. Due to the constant
[00:06:26.500 --> 00:06:38.700]   use of racist language, the casual lack of respect or care for Asian Americans, and the
[00:06:38.700 --> 00:06:45.700]   accounts of police harassment, violence, and erasure which pervades coverage.
[00:06:46.700 --> 00:06:52.700]   But there was a lot of information in these archives, and I felt a responsibility to sift
[00:06:52.700 --> 00:06:59.940]   through them to find what I could. This sometimes meant searching every article of every issue
[00:06:59.940 --> 00:07:05.940]   of a newspaper for days or weeks following a major event. I've been very interested
[00:07:05.940 --> 00:07:10.820]   in how early Chinese-American and Asian-American newspapers covered lives of people in their
[00:07:10.820 --> 00:07:15.500]   own communities and have found a number of resources for in-community newspapers which
[00:07:15.500 --> 00:07:22.500]   you can find in the bibliography. Personal, family, and community collections are, of
[00:07:22.500 --> 00:07:28.080]   course, the most likely to include items which can give us insight into the lives of people
[00:07:28.080 --> 00:07:33.660]   in otherwise erased historic communities of color. But they often exist as the result
[00:07:33.660 --> 00:07:40.220]   of careful private stewardship for generations. And families whose histories have been systematically
[00:07:40.220 --> 00:07:45.460]   excluded and erased from official white institutions' collections, or whose histories have been
[00:07:45.460 --> 00:07:50.460]   represented in racist ways, may be very cautious about how their stories and collections are
[00:07:50.460 --> 00:07:52.460]   shared and to whom.
[00:07:52.460 --> 00:08:02.460]   In researching Providence's Chinatown, I found that I quickly collected dozens and eventually
[00:08:02.460 --> 00:08:08.460]   hundreds of photos as well as web pages and archives I needed to follow up on. Tracking
[00:08:08.460 --> 00:08:12.460]   where each one came from, which I wanted to return to for a more detailed look, quickly
[00:08:12.460 --> 00:08:19.460]   became a challenge. This is a spreadsheet I used to organize my recordkeeping. You don't
[00:08:19.460 --> 00:08:25.460]   have to use my system, but I'll share how it works and why. First, it's a working document,
[00:08:25.460 --> 00:08:32.460]   not a formal bibliography. In it, I note buildings by construction or destruction dates, addresses,
[00:08:32.460 --> 00:08:39.460]   and include notes and links. Using these tracking spreadsheets can surface important connections.
[00:08:39.460 --> 00:08:44.460]   Using names from newspaper articles, court records, and other sources, I've been able
[00:08:44.460 --> 00:08:49.460]   to reconstruct a rough directory of who lived or worked at each address in Providence's
[00:08:49.460 --> 00:08:55.460]   Chinatown. But be aware, these records are incredibly fragmentary and partial. And relying
[00:08:55.460 --> 00:09:00.460]   primarily on these kinds of accounts, with their racist views and understandings, risks
[00:09:00.460 --> 00:09:04.460]   giving those perspectives too much control over the way we understand these histories,
[00:09:04.460 --> 00:09:09.460]   especially when they are our own. Saidiya Hartman has written about the limits of the
[00:09:09.460 --> 00:09:14.460]   archive as a resource for knowledge of the lives of enslaved people during the trans-Atlantic
[00:09:14.460 --> 00:09:19.460]   slave trade and the possibilities of what she terms "critical fabulation" in overcoming
[00:09:19.460 --> 00:09:26.460]   these limits. Jamelle Bouie writes about the limitations of ledgers and numerically based analyses
[00:09:26.460 --> 00:09:32.460]   based in the bureaucracy of enslavement, and what it cannot tell us. Find more information
[00:09:32.460 --> 00:09:38.460]   and links in the inspirations page of the written guide.
[00:09:38.460 --> 00:09:43.060]   Mapping Photos. As you collect more and more photos, you'll
[00:09:43.060 --> 00:09:48.140]   need to keep track of what each photograph represents spatially. Placing them onto a
[00:09:48.140 --> 00:09:54.060]   map can be a powerful means of organizing what you know and don't know. Can you locate
[00:09:54.060 --> 00:10:00.220]   the buildings in a photo on the map? It can be helpful to copy/paste, or drag images
[00:10:00.220 --> 00:10:06.820]   into a Google presentation, like this. As you find more images, you can start to see
[00:10:06.820 --> 00:10:11.420]   which buildings you haven't been able to see in a photograph and how good a photo source
[00:10:11.420 --> 00:10:16.980]   you have for each building. Over time, this map will grow as you gain a richer understanding
[00:10:16.980 --> 00:10:21.740]   of the way these images fit together to give you a sense of the neighborhood. For more
[00:10:21.740 --> 00:10:27.100]   on my research process and methodology, see the text version of this guide, at jywarren.github.io/seeing-lost-enclaves
[00:10:27.100 --> 00:10:31.420]   That wraps up the first draft of my research guide for Seeing Lost Enclaves, although
[00:10:31.420 --> 00:10:36.380]   I will be continuing to refine and expand it in the months to come. Thank you and please
[00:10:36.380 --> 00:10:37.980]   reach out with suggestions and questions.
[00:10:37.980 --> 00:10:56.220]   [Music]