|
Credit: Nick Romanenko
Geography department cartographer Mike
Siegel at the Alexander Library in New
Brunswick, where he finds information
and resources that help him create
compelling maps.
|
A Black History Month exhibit depicting African-American migrations over five centuries opened to rave reviews earlier this month in New York, and the exhibit’s accompanying Web site (www.inmotionaame.org) scored 3 million hits on its first day. Receiving a good deal of credit for the exhibit’s success is geography department cartographer Mike Siegel, who produced more than 50 maps that vividly illustrate mass movements of African-Americans in search of political freedom, economic opportunity and cultural enrichment.
The exhibit, “In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience,” is on display through April at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.
Siegel is quick to acknowledge his unlikeliness as a contributor to a black history project. He learned bits and pieces of black history during his school years, but he went on to major in geography as a Rutgers undergraduate, then later earned a master’s degree in library science.
In 1987, he became the geography department’s cartographer (mapmaker.rutgers.edu), a staff position in which he produces maps that illustrate research papers and teaching texts by faculty members. Over the years he gained recognition as a mapmaker within the Rutgers community. When historian Sylviane Diouf, content manager for the Schomburg Center’s project, was looking for someone who could make maps for her exhibit, she talked to Rutgers history professor Carolyn Brown, who recommended Siegel for the task.
“Sylviane gave me carte blanche to come up with map designs,” said Siegel. “She sent me her list of topics and a number of reference maps, all of which was new subject matter to me.” But he saw that as an asset, not a liability. “I put myself in the audience’s position and tried to come up with illustrations that were clear, easy to understand and told a story.”
Creating maps that tell a story is no easy task, Siegel said. “People tend to take maps very literally, using them to pinpoint an address or find a path between one town and another. But for this project, and even in most of my work, I’m depicting trends – things like land use patterns, resource availability and changes to our cityscapes.”
To convey the migration story, he latched onto the concept of “corridors,” instead of “routes,” showing broad movements over wide areas. His maps show directions and destinations of escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad in the 18th and 19th centuries, migration patterns of African-Americans northward and westward through the mid-20th century to seize economic opportunities, and since 1970, their return to the desegregated South as prospects for blacks improved in the region. Some maps illustrate the less known but still significant trends of historic and contemporary black migration between the United States and the Caribbean, as well as recent immigration from Africa.
In addition to collecting and presenting data, Siegel paid close attention to the “look and feel” of his maps. He knew the maps would be viewed on the Web, so he paid attention to color schemes and font sizes to ensure legibility, and overall uniformity to ease the viewer’s transition from one map to another. Also, he realized the Web would deliver a worldwide audience and that he couldn’t take for granted that everyone would know African and American geography. So he made liberal use of locator maps that labeled all the states or showed where various countries are on the African continent.
Viewers of the migration exhibit and Web site are not the only immediate beneficiaries of Siegel’s work. “This project is so rich in examples of map design that it serves as a great resource in the undergraduate cartography course I teach in the geography department,” Siegel said.
Perhaps the biggest lesson he conveys is that the Web is nowhere near being a replacement for libraries. “The Web may be a great place to start collecting data, but information is often not organized or verified. That’s why I use lots of books and consult frequently with librarians to help me judge the data and put it in context.”
Ken Mitchell, chair of the geography department, lauded Siegel’s work. “Mike thinks up endlessly creative ways to exploit the communicative power of maps. He also keeps us in touch with our department’s roots, not just recent alumni, but the tradition of cartography at Rutgers that stretches back to Simeon DeWitt, George Washington’s mapmaker and one of the earliest graduates of Queen’s College.”
|
