Gwendolyn Warren and the Detroit Geographic Expedition and Institute
Data feminism commits to challenging unequal power structures and working toward justice.
This is an excerpt, with permission, from the forthcoming book Data Feminism (MIT Press, 2020) by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein.
In 1971, the Detroit Geographic Expedition and Institute (DGEI) released a provocative map, Where Commuters Run Over Black Children on the Pointes-Downtown Track. The map (figure 2.1) uses sharp black dots to illustrate the places in the community where the children were killed. On one single street corner, there were six Black children killed by white drivers over the course of six months. On the map, the dots blot out that entire block.
The people who lived along the deadly route had long recognized the magnitude of the problem, as well as its profound impact on the lives of their friends and neighbors. But gathering data in support of this truth turned out to be a major challenge. No one was keeping detailed records of these deaths, nor was anyone making even more basic information about what had happened publicly available. “We couldn’t get that information,” explains Gwendolyn Warren, the Detroit-based organizer who headed the unlikely collaboration: an alliance between Black young adults…
