The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Geospatial Intelligence, and Civil Rights

该项目将研究民权运动领导人和工人如何使用地理空间数据和技术来计算，绘制和分析20世纪60年代自由斗争期间美国南部种族隔离和歧视的空间和社会维度。 学生非暴力协调委员会（SNCC）是这一地理空间工作的中心，它产生了一系列详细的报告和其他产品，为民权项目提供信息，但这些项目在很大程度上被社会科学家忽视了。 SNCC的工作人员从他们在南部小城镇和农村地区的实地行动中，战略性地汇编、传播和解释空间和社会信息，以记录和挑战白色至上和种族不平等的规范性权力。 了解民权组织如何参与这一“地理空间情报”（GI）推进了对地理数据收集，应用和分析的潜力的理解，以用于非精英行动主义和社会变革的目的。该研究项目有助于地理知识，并有可能通过其出版计划和创新的推广影响地理课程和公众思想。 具体而言，调查人员将向广泛的社区行为者分发研究结果，包括通过田纳西州地理联盟及其在州联盟运动和国家社会研究理事会中的合作伙伴。他们将为更广泛的公众创造教育材料，并促进课堂教学和学习空间和场所在民权运动期间挑战隔离和歧视的作用。 此外，研究结果将通过田纳西大学的“管道计划”传播，该计划提供了与历史上的黑人学院和大学（HBCUs）合作并招募少数民族学生接受进一步研究生教育的机会。 这个研究项目依赖于档案工作在几个民权相关的收藏品在美国各地，以及一系列的开放式采访与SNCC的幸存成员熟悉的生成和实施地理空间数据收集和分析技术。批判性种族理论和方法以及话语分析将被用来调查以下问题：1）民权工作者如何以及在何种方式和政治背景下使用测绘和地理数据收集和分析策略来确定种族不平等的模式和抗议目标？ 2)民权工作者如何使用或操作他们的地理空间智能方法和分析产品来计划和执行重大的民权项目，以及这些产品如何扩展我们对黑人地理的定义和理解？3)民权工作者使用的地理空间情报的日常形式如何使地理空间情报与国防和国家安全问题密切相关，并扩大了当代对地理空间情报的理解？虽然十多年来一直是学术工作的焦点，但与GI相关的研究将该工艺限制在军事工业应用中。 SNCC的使用地理数据和地理标志的做法扩大了这一定义和背景，以及非洲裔美国人的政治和黑人地理视角的民权运动的研究中的价值的内部运作的理解。

This project will examine how Civil Rights Movement leaders and workers used geospatial data and techniques to calculate, map, and analyze the spatial and social dimensions of segregation and discrimination in the US South during the 1960s freedom struggle. At the center of this geospatial labor was the Student-NonViolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which generated a series of detailed reports and other products that informed civil rights projects but which have been largely neglected by social scientists. From their field-based operations in Deep Southern small towns and rural areas, SNCC workers strategically compiled, disseminated and interpreted spatial and social information for the purposes of documenting and challenging the normative power of white supremacy and racial inequality. Understanding how Civil Rights organizations engaged in this "Geospatial Intelligence" (GI) advances an understanding of the potential of geographical data collection, application, and analysis to be utilized for the purposes of non-elite activism and social change. This research project contributes to Geographic knowledge and has the potential to impact Geographic curriculum and public thought through its plan of publication and innovative outreach. Specifically, the investigators will distribute research findings to a broad collection of community actors, including through the Tennessee Geographic Alliance and its partners within the state alliance movement and the National Council for Social Studies. They will create education materials for both the broader public and to facilitate classroom teaching and learning about the role of space and place in challenging segregation and discrimination during the Civil Rights Movement. In addition, findings of the research will be disseminated via the University of Tennessee "Pipeline Program", which offers an opportunity to engage with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and to recruit minority students for further graduate education. This research project relies on archival work at several Civil Rights related collections across the United States as well as a series of open-ended interviews with surviving members of SNCC familiar with the generation and implementation of geospatial data gathering and analysis techniques. Critical race theory and methodology and discourse analysis will be used to investigate the following questions: 1) How and in what ways and political contexts did civil rights workers employ mapping and geographical data collection and analysis strategies to identify patterns of racial inequality and targets for protest? 2) How did Civil Rights workers use or operationalize their Geospatial Intelligence methods and analytical products to plan and execute major civil rights projects and how do those products expand our definition and understanding of Black Geographies? 3) How do everyday forms of Geospatial Intelligence used by Civil Rights workers problematize and expand contemporary understandings of GI that strongly associate Geospatial Intelligence with defense and national security concerns? While the focal point of academic work for over a decade, GI-related research confines the craft to military-industrial applications. SNCC's use of geographical data and GI practice expands this definition and context as well as understanding of the inner workings of African American politics and the value of a Black Geographies perspective within a study of the Civil Rights Movement.