Grant to fund Cal Poly project on Africans in California history
Public lecture and presentation on the project will be held at 5:10 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 20
– A team of researchers at Cal Poly has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study the role of Afro-descendants in early Spanish and Mexican California.
The project, AfricanCalifornios.org: A Digital History of the Role of Afro-descendants in Early Spanish and Mexican California (1768-1850), is led by history lecturer Dr. Cameron Jones and computer science professor Dr. Foaad Khosmood. The interdisciplinary effort involves students from the history and computer science departments.
The award is one of 219 grants funded nationwide by the federal agency. Of the 31 grants awarded in California, Cal Poly received the third-highest amount, following projects at UCLA and USC. The proposal was submitted jointly by the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Engineering, and the Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy.
Although historians recognize that Afro-descendants were present in Spanish and Mexican California, little research has been done on their impact. The 1790 census recorded about 19% of the population as being of African descent, but many Afro-descendants obscured their origins in church records to integrate into Spanish and Mexican society. Pío Pico, the last Mexican governor of California, was a well-known Afro-descendant, but the broader role of Africans and their descendants in early California history remains underexplored.
The project will use computational techniques such as natural language processing and data science to create visualizations illustrating the presence and contributions of Afro-descendants in California history before statehood in 1850. The team will develop a website, AfricanCalifornios.org, which will feature historical research, visualizations, databases, and lesson plans for students from fourth grade to college level.
An evaluator from the National Endowment for the Humanities described the project as “an important and much-needed corrective to the dominant narrative in California history, the history of the U.S. West, Chicana/o/x and Mexican American history, and Borderlands history.”
A public lecture and presentation on the project will be held at 5:10 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 20, at Cal Poly’s Performing Arts Center in Phillips Hall. Media and community members are encouraged to attend.
Jones, the project director, is an author specializing in Spanish American borderlands history and has taught in Cal Poly’s history department for 10 years. Khosmood, the project co-director, is the Forbes Professor of Computer Engineering and research director at the Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy.
Team members include computer science students Anthony Colin Herrera, Marco Araiza, and Savannah Bosley, along with history students Jack T. Martin and Aaron Prieto.
The Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy conducts interdisciplinary research on socially impactful projects involving advanced technology.
More information is available at www.africancalifornios.org.
