Baltimore & the Fifteenth Amendment, May 19, 1870
An Interactive Historical Investigation by David Troy © 1996

The Maryland State Archives currently produces a document packet called "Celebrating Rights and Responsibilities: Baltimore and the 15th Amendment." This packet contains reproductions of 10 primary source documents which describe Maryland's reaction to the passing of 15th Amendment.

As a basis for my project, I will convert this document packet into hypertext markup language and make it available on the World Wide Web. In addition, my conversion would include interactive mapping which would relate both 1870 and present-day maps of Baltimore City to census data (collected by the Maryland State Archives) and other textual and graphical information. My project will also feature original interpretive information in the form of internal hyperlinks (within the structure of the document packet), additional captions and notes, and external hyperlinks (to related sites/information located elsewhere on the global Internet). My project will also feature an original document, telling the story of the 15th Amendment in Maryland, as derived from the document packet and other primary sources. This document would be comparable to a standard "paper" and would contain hyperlinks to information contained elsewhere in the project.

Because it will be based on hypertext, the information contained within this project will have multiple "front ends." People can reach the same photo of Frederick Douglass by clicking on an 1870 map, a present-day map, a link in an index, or a link within the interpretive paper. Most links will be two-way -- i.e. if clicking on "Orchard St." produces a list of black Civil War veterans and an Baltimore Sun article, the veterans and the article will in turn be linked back to the map showing "Orchard St."

The goal of the project is to add value to a set of primary source materials by linking them internally and to external sources, as well as to create original interactive interpretive information. By making the project permanently available on the Internet, it will also serve as an effective marketing tool for the sales of the document packet.

Some questions the project will attempt to answer, both in the paper and in the interpretive notes:

• What was Frederick Douglass' role in the selection of the May 19th, 1870 parade route?
• Why did Maryland reject the 15th amendment in 1870 and not ratify it until 1973?
• What artistic representations were made of the event, and why are they significant?
• What was the significance of the May 19th, 1870 parade route?
• What has changed between 1870 and today along the parade route? Are these still predominantly black areas? Do blacks still take pride in any of the institutions or communities present in the parade route in 1870?
• What was the impact of the passing of the 15th amendment in MD?
• Why was the Baltimore celebration the largest in the US?
• What was the attitude of blacks towards the passing of the 15th amendment? Toward whites?
• What was the attitude of whites towards the passing of the 15th amendment? Toward blacks?

Our company is also creating a CD-ROM product on U.S. Civil War history, and I intend to submit it for inclusion on this disc as well. I will also make it freely available to the Maryland State Archives or any other institution.