https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/4254397/
I choose to create a data map which depicted slavery among teenagers in the 1850’s. Creating this map provided me with a very interesting visualization of the age demographics of those that were forced into slavery at the time. Through this map I am trying to demonstrate to the viewer the concentration of enslaved teenagers in America in the mid 1800’s. By creating this map I was able to visually demonstrate where most of the enslaved teens were at the time, which happened to be in the South Carolina, Georgia area of the United States. This map demonstrates that there was a higher amount of male teenage slaves rather than female slaves which is understandable for the time due to slave owners typically having more male slaves for field work. It is really horrible to think that all these teenagers were forced into slavery and completely stripped of their innocence and adolescence as they were put into a horrific situation. This map really made me think about how sad it is that these teenage slaves most likely had to spend most of their lives being brought up in slavery. This gives insight into the dark past of the southern area of the United States. The South was home to a great deal of plantations that had rather large slave populations. Seeing that there are nearly four-thousand teenage slaves in certain counties is really eye opening when it comes to understanding the scope of teenage slavery within the United States. I found it interesting the sort-of curve in the map that demonstrates how slavery was prominent in Kentucky. The map portrays a high concentration in certain counties of the state which is a stark contrast to midwest states near Kentucky that are without slave populations. This entire mapping process gave me insight into digital mapping which I had no prior experienced with but, I was able to gain further insight into American slavery populations in the 1850’s through this exercise.
This is an excellent data map that provides a solid visualization of enslaved teenagers in 1850. The fact that there is a very distinctive “belt” representing the densest population throughout the South might be expected, but the fact that it is within the interior, rather than in coastal cities is also striking. That raises some important questions about area density and if that “belt” is true of other populations as well. I agree with your analysis that by emphasizing teenaged populations, it highlights how young people comprised a large number of the overall enslaved population. To see this visually on a map makes that fact all the more important.