{"id":524,"date":"2025-09-03T12:59:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T16:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/campaign-new\/?post_type=story&p=524"},"modified":"2026-04-23T10:45:40","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T14:45:40","slug":"mapping-reparations-in-massachusetts","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/plan-and-purpose\/2025\/09\/03\/mapping-reparations-in-massachusetts\/","title":{"rendered":"Mapping reparations in Massachusetts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Interdisciplinary project combines public history with data and GIS savvy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

History<\/a> Professor Ousmane Power-Greene<\/a> has been tracking reparations efforts across Massachusetts and has wanted to create a digital map<\/a> so other scholars, students, and the public could easily search for initiatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s where data science<\/a> and economics<\/a> major Jonathan Solomon \u201927 comes in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the spring 2025 semester, Solomon took Introduction to GIS and for his final project mapped New York City\u2019s transit deserts \u2014 those areas poorly served by public transportation. On the day Solomon gave his final presentation for that project, he ran into Power-Greene, who was scouting students to work on digital mapping. Solomon was eager to contribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt will be a streamlined way to find efforts in your area if you want to donate to a particular initiative or see what\u2019s going on,\u201d says Solomon, whose interest in STEM started during childhood while playing games like Roblox and experimenting with coding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"professor
Professor Ousmane Power-Greene<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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\"student
Jonathan Solomon ’27<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Since 2021, Power-Greene has been working on a public history project in Western Massachusetts called Documenting the Early History of Black Lives in the Connecticut River Valley<\/a>, which aims to document the lives of free, enslaved, and formerly enslaved Black residents in the region. He\u2019s also the commissioner of the Northampton Reparations Study Commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGrassroots history initiatives tend to be the foundation for reparative work,\u201d Power-Greene says. \u201cThe challenge is through communication. Creating an interactive tool that will give people a macro sense of reparative work is a first step in this sort of intellectual work. I was looking for a student like Jonathan who had those competencies to begin building a tool that can be used by others. Jonathan is able to immediately understand the bigger picture and then execute it on a digital level.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n