Gloria Betcher — Tracing Race at ISU Project on Mapping the Black ISC Student Housing Experience to 1940

CATEGORIES: Department News

Since its founding, Iowa State has allowed people of color to enroll, but not until the late 1940s were these students able to live on campus without being impeded by an unwritten policy that required students of color (SOC) to room together. The housing situation of most SOC at Iowa State College (ISC) has remained unstudied in any systematic way. Led by Gloria Betcher, Ph.D., with cocurators Ted Grevstad-Nordbrock, Ph.D., & Jeanne Beck, Ed.S., this ESRI Story Map project, “Mapping the Black ISC Student Housing Experience to 1940,” explores the off-campus housing experiences of Black students, including where students could live, who supported them in finding housing, and how restrictive covenants affected their housing options. It is one of two inaugural Tracing Race at ISU projects sponsored by the Iowa State University Library Digital Scholarship and Initiatives Department.

In February, The Tracing Race project released a Story Map called Mapping the Black ISC (Iowa State College) Student Housing Experience.  In it, they have documented the stories of Black students as they worked to overcome the barriers to housing in Ames in order to pursue their education at Iowa State College.

For more information on the initiative, please check out their web site.