The Redacted Heritage Atlas exists in the spirit of the journalist, activist, and social scientist Ida B. Wells. In 1922, she established herself as all three with the publication of the map shown above. Using the power of a map, she illustrated a pattern of lynching of Black people across the United States, proving then that this race-based violence was a pattern. It is in this vein that the Redacted Heritage Atlas exists: to illustrate the pattern of redacted heritage across the United States, north to south, east to west, in its many forms.