from-negatives-to-knowledge
📚 About the Project
Clinton Wright Photograph Collection
The Clinton Wright Photograph Collection is a powerful visual record of Las Vegas’s Historic Westside, a historically African American neighborhood shaped by the legacy of segregation and the strength of community solidarity. Wright, a longtime photographer for The Las Vegas Voice newspaper, captured moments of daily life, civic activism, religious gatherings, and local culture over several decades. His work provides rare insight into a community that has been underrepresented in mainstream archival and historical narratives.
Dr. Charles I. West and The Las Vegas Voice
Dr. Charles I. West was the first African American physician licensed in Nevada and a pivotal figure in the fight for civil rights in Las Vegas. He founded The Las Vegas Voice, Nevada’s first African American newspaper, which became a vital platform for the Westside community. The paper documented civic milestones, church events, school achievements, and grassroots activism, all of which were reflected in the Clinton Wright negatives.
Why a Knowledge Graph?
This project aims to transform historically inaccessible images into linked data to:
- Elevate underrepresented histories
- Make archival content more discoverable
- Connect people, places, and events through relationships that reflect lived experience
By applying semantic web technologies like RDF, Schema.org, SKOS, and AgRelOn, we model community memory in a structured, interoperable way that supports further research, teaching, and storytelling.
Community and Student-Centered Process
What makes this project unique is its deeply collaborative nature. Undergraduate students played a central role in researching photographs, identifying key entities, applying controlled vocabularies, and learning how community history can be represented in modern digital frameworks. This model not only builds digital literacy but empowers students to take ownership of heritage work.
