Mapping Karen Parker’s Journal

Mapping Karen Parker’s Journal

Past

"This StoryMap provides a multimedia tour of Karen Parker’s journal where she chronicled her experiences as the first Black woman undergraduate student in 1963-1965 at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Parker was a journalism major and a leader in the Civil Rights Movement during this critical time. UNC-CH has been known infamously as “The Light on the Hill” and the town of Chapel Hill has gained a reputation as a progressive, liberal town in a conservative Southern state. However, Parker’s journal tells a very different story. Hers is a story of struggle for freedom and inclusion in the face of violence and discrimination. Her journal reveals the racialized and gendered boundaries of exclusion and inequality at the university, in Chapel Hill, and nationwide during this time, as well as the fight for equality and justice.

Parker gives a first hand account of how as a Black woman she felt out of place, isolated, excluded, and subjected to violence in many spaces of the university and Chapel Hill in her journal. She thrived against all odds.The journal also documents how students like Parker worked to create spaces of belonging and to transform an institution and a town that remained committed to white male dominance."
- Description taken from "Mapping Karen Parker's Journal" website

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Digital Methods: Activism and Advocacy, Electronic Literature, Spatial and Spatio-temporal Analysis 

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