This tag was created by Anonymous. The last update was by Stephen Robertson.
READ ME: Help Navigating This Book
Harlem in Disorder is a multi-layered, hyperlinked narrative that connects different scales of analysis: individual events, aggregated patterns, and a chronological narrative. It features photographs, charts, and interactive maps.The chronological narrative is the top layer. It is divided into four sections that can be viewed in a table of contents by clicking on the line and dot icon on the far left of the menu bar at the top of the page. The table of contents can be accessed from any page. Clicking on a section title in the table of contents will take you to that section. Sections that you have clicked on will appear in a lighter color.
"On the Streets" examines the events of the disorder on March 19 and 20, 1935. "In the Courts" traces the prosecutions of those arrested during the disorder and of the police officer investigated for killing Lloyd Hobbs, a sixteen-year-old Black boy. The treatment of the events of the disorder in the hearings, investigations, and reports of the Mayor's Commission on Conditions in Harlem (MCCH) is the subject of "Under Investigation." "Over Time" examines discussions of the disorder in the press on its anniversary, in the reporting on later racial disorders in Harlem, in the publications of the Federal Writer’s Project, in the work of sociologists in the 1960s, in discussions of the Harlem Renaissance, and in the historical literature.
The sections of the chronological narrative are made up of sets of pages linked in a sequence (called Paths in the Scalar platform). On the bottom of the first page in each set is a "Contents" list of the pages it contains and a button that takes you to the beginning of the sequence. At the bottom of each subsequent page is a button that takes you to the next page in the sequence and an arrow that returns you to the previous page. The examples below are from the beginning of the section "In the Courts."
On pages within the set there is also a link at the top of the page that returns you to the beginning of the set of pages.
A page in a set can also contain a set of pages, i.e. a subsection, that appears at the bottom of the page as a contents list, and button to move through that set. Beneath the contents of the subsection is a button that offers the option to continue moving forward through the main set, giving readers the choice of exploring the subset or continuing with the main set of pages. At the end of a set of pages is a button that takes you to the next set in the chronological narrative. The example below is from the page "In court on March 20."
You can also navigate between pages by clicking on the compass icon in the top left of the menu bar and selecting “Recent,” which will display a list of the last fifteen pages you have visited. Clicking on a page in the list will take you to that page.
The maps that appear on each page about the events of the disorder on March 19 and 20 show only those events which occurred or may have occurred in the time frame discussed on the page. A map of all the events of the disorder appears on the first page of that section. Pages in the chronological narrative also contain photographs and charts; clicking on their caption takes you to pages that display larger-sized images and information about the media and where else it is used in the site.
The additional layers of the narrative are accessed through links in the pages and by the tags that appear at the bottom of the page. Events during the disorder discussed in a page for which there was evidence of their timing appear as tags at the bottom of that page. The example below is from the page on events from "11:00 PM to 11:30 PM."
Events whose timing is uncertain only appear as links in the page, identified by blue colored text and as underlined when you roll your cursor over the text.
Clicking on a tag or a link takes you to the page about that event. The pages on individual events provide the details of the sources about an event. Consequently, only direct quotations on pages in the chronological narrative have note links that provide information on sources. Additional links in the page take you to pages on categories of events such as assault, arrest, looting, etc. Pages which examine categories of events can also be accessed from individual event pages by using the tags at the bottom of those pages or on the "Events" section in the table of contents.
Pages on individual events discuss the sources in which information on the event appears, identify agreement and disagreement among them and elaborate the decisions about what information to use and why, and about how to categorize an event. Maps on these pages show all the events of the disorder with a blue pin identifying the event that is the subject of the page or a pin with a white building icon when the event relates to a business. On pages about the arrest of an individual, the maps show all the events of the disorder with a blue pin identifying the arrest that is the subject of the page, a pin with a white building icon identifying where the individual lived (when that information is available), and a line linking the two locations. Pages on events also contain photographs and charts; clicking on their captions takes you to pages that display larger-sized images and information about the media and where else it is used in the site. The tags at the bottom of an event page link to the page in the chronological narrative about when the event took place, if that is known. When the time is not known, there are links in the page to chronological narrative pages about possible times. Additional tags put an event in the context of other events with which it shares some feature. How many events are in each of those categories is identified by the number in brackets at end of the tag. The example below is the tag list for the categories that include the arrest of James Hughes:
Clicking on a category tag or link takes you to the page that contains a discussion of how that category of events was defined, of the patterns in those events, and who they involved. All the events in a category appear as tags at the bottom of the page. If the category is part of another broader category, a tag or link to that category also appears at the bottom of the text. The example below is the tag list on the page for Assaults on Black men:
Pages on broad categories can also include pullout boxes or lists that provide links to related subcategories. For example, the page for the Assaults tag includes links to the fifty-four events categorized as assaults. It also features fifteen related tags into which those events are grouped. Six tags represent forms of assault (in the pullout box on the left of the image below), four tags are based on the identities of the alleged victim, and three tags are based on the police response and the resulting legal proceedings (in the tag list on the right of the image below). The list also includes a tag for assaults by police to highlight a gap in the data: the absence of specific incidents of violence by police notwithstanding widespread statements about police beating and shooting at people on the streets.
Maps on pages about specific categories of events show only events in that category; additional categories can be added using the menu. Pages on categories of events also contain photographs and charts; clicking on their caption takes you to pages that display larger-sized images and information about the media and where else it is used in the site. Only direct quotations on category pages have note links that provide information on sources because the pages on individual events provide the details of the sources. Pages on the broad categories of events can be accessed directly in the "Events" section of the table of contents.
Some pages on categories of individuals involved in events and on categories of outcomes in the legal process do not include any analysis; they are used simply as tags to put the outcomes of individual prosecutions in context by providing a means of accessing the other cases that share that characteristic.