The Urban Heritage Project and the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites (which are both part of the Preservation Research Collaborative at Penn) are creating the Resurrection City Digital Atlas. This digital humanities project explores methods of documentation and spatial representation of cultural landscapes, focusing on highlighting intangible aspects of civil rights history. In partnership with Louisiana State University and the National Park Service, the Digital Atlas experiments with new combinations of digital documentation and interpretation methods–including mapping, geospatial data collection, and ethnographic studies of contemporary communities–to create more effective studies, plans, and decision-making (treatment) guidance.
Resurrection City was a landscape of protest occupying the space of the National Mall from May 13 to June 23, 1968, as part of the Poor People's Campaign (PPC). The PPC, initially led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), intended to bring economic justice to the forefront of political and civil rights issues. The Resurrection City Digital Atlas recovers this cultural geography through 3D-mapping and creative archival media visualization, interpreting now‐absent aspects of the protest ‐ its spaces, its work, and its creators ‐ and reintroducing this site to the cultural landscape of the National Mall.
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