Justice
A New Way to Map the Spread and Decline of Slavery in the U.S.
The historian and cartographer Bill Rankin visualizes the practice with a fresh approach.
Although it was abolished in 1865, slavery in the U.S. is still being mapped by cartographers looking for fresh approaches to the topic. The latest effort comes from the historian and cartographer Bill Rankin.
Rankin’s new maps provide snapshots of U.S. slave populations from 1790 to 1870 in 10-year intervals. But his methodology is a departure from that of previous cartographers in that it doesn’t take counties as the smallest units of analysis.