Bill Ferster’s ASSERT model, described in his book Interactive Visualization Insight Through Inquiry focuses on the idea of using digital technologies to answer and ask research questions of all kinds. This model is particularly applicable and appealing when approaching historical research questions because of the concept that Ferster, analyzing information and gathering it in such a way that it not only displays quantitative information but also uses graphics and visual technologies to display information in a way that evokes emotion and shares a narrative. Ferster focuses not only on what information the visualizations are sharing but also how users can interact with or understand the information they are seeing.

The first section of Ferster’s book focuses on asking research questions. Specifically what Ferster says are, “specific questions about a topic that can be answered by accessible and reliable data.” (Ferster, 40).

Examining the Hungerford school in Eatonville as a case study of Eatonville’s transformation since its incorporation at the end of the 19^th century, and then placing it in the larger context of the Jim Crow South and the history of the civil rights movement in Florida sets the stage for a meaningful and relevant digital visualization. Education and the formation of African American institutions of higher learning, like the Tuskegee Institute have been well-documented throughout the historical record. The idea of having access to education and the connotations in American society of being well-educated have long been social markers of members of the middle and upper classes. With the racial divide following the end of Reconstruction only growing nationally, but particularly in the South, schools created for African American students could be interpreted as symbols of resistance against the new Jim Crow laws and the larger institutions that sought to erase the progress that Black Americans have made following the end of Reconstruction. In Pride Overcomes Prejudice, Charlottesville’s schools are examined not only for the material constructs as bastions of education but also how they fit into the larger history of Charlotteville’s Black community and their activist movements.

Hungerford School, like those analyzed in Charlottesville can be analyzed in a similar manner. While we do not have the physical structure of the school, the blueprints for the original institution or larger maps of Eatonville while the school was in operation might lead to a larger understanding of the school’s place within the history of Eatonville as a whole.

Hungerford school is an interesting footprint to Although I myself am interested in the actual content students were learning at the time. Given the school’s status as a Normal and Industrial/Agricultural school, I am very interested in the content that was being shared in classes, along with how those classes and the education provided to the students led to employment. Was the Hungerford school preparing farmers? Domestics? Did anyone from the Hungerford School, other than Zora Neale Hurston, attend secondary education?

I believe that by looking through the annual reports of the Hungerford School this will be the first step to answering these questions, from there looking at the satellite imagery over the Hungerford School (thank you NASA and GoogleEarth) I wonder what sort of imprint is still visible of the Hungerford school? Can you still see the furrows from the fields and agricultural structures that are documented in photographs of students planting?

Bibliography

Ferster, Bill. Interactive Visualization: Insight Through Inquiry. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012.

French, Scot. “A Dream of the Future: African American Civic Activism and the Making of Jefferson High School,” in Pride Overcomes Prejudice: A History of Charlottesville’s African American School. Edited by Andrea Douglas, 30-71. Charlottesville: JSAAHC, 2013.

French, Scot, Craig Barton, and Peter Flora. Booker T. Washington and Segregated Education in Virginia – An Historic Resource Study. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 2007. National Parks Service History eLibrary, accessed February 22, 2023, http://npshistory.com/publications/bowa/hrs.pdf