Each senior in the Johns Hopkins University School of Continuing Studies' Bachelor of Liberal Arts program must complete a "senior project." This project typically consists of one semester of independent study that culminates in a paper of approximately 30 pages. This paper is submitted to a faculty adviser and graded.

Having had several classes with Maryland State Archivist and JHU faculty member Dr. Ed Papenfuse, I was familiar with a printed publication on the 15th Amendment done by the Maryland State Archives. This document packet, called "Celebrating Rights and Responsibilities: Baltimore & the Fifteenth Amendment, May 19, 1870," contains reproductions of ten primary source documents on about forty tabloid size pages.

I received approval from Dr. Papenfuse and from my other advisers at JHU SCS to base my project around the conversion of this document packet into HTML. I would then also add other primary source documents, interpretive material, and links to secondary sources. The finished product is an online version of the original document packet that contains related primary source materials, interpretive information, searchable transcripts of the original source documents, and interactive artwork not present in the original packet.

From February through April, 1996, I did the following:

• Converted original MSA document packet to HTML
• Created interactive image maps of four lithographs
• Performed Optical Character Recognition conversion on over 160K (text) of newspaper articles
• Created two animations depicting the route of the 15th Amendment celebration parade through Baltimore
• Took over 40 photographs of sites on the parade route, 21 of which were used
• Traced the parade route on a present day map
• Wrote short interpretations of each primary source document
• Wrote short biographies of each key figure and paired them with individual portraits
• Wrote "The Story of the 15th Amendment in Maryland," an essay aimed at general audiences that explains the politics behind the passage and celebration of the amendment

The site was submitted for final grading on May 1, 1996. The project is being made available on the Internet and for now is intended for use by anyone interested in the subject, including any and all educational uses.

Please do remember that any work on this site is copyright by David C. Troy. Any use other than for personal or educational use is strictly prohibited. It may not be included in any other publications in any media format without express written permission from David C. Troy.

Ultimately, this site will be included on a CD-ROM project on the Civil War to be published by Toad Computers, Inc.

Is this project "finished?" No! Far from it. As of May 1st, 1996, it was certainly at a reasonable "stopping point" for academic purposes. But the beauty of web sites is that they are a work in progress. As I get new materials, I will add them.