The digital project Becoming Richard Pryor deep dives into the city of Peoria, Illinois, where comedian Richard Pryor grew up and how his first two decades living there shaped him. It explores the neighborhood, segregation, and community life that surrounded him growing up. This project was done around 2015 by Scott Saul who is a professor at UC Berkley. He wrote it as a companion to his biography Becoming Richard Pryor.
The project uses interactive maps, photographs, essays, and news articles build a digital reinvention of the world Richard grew up in (1940s and 1950s) in order to provide a deep understanding of how the environment he grew up in shaped his life in his comedy and in his social perspective.
This project is important because it merges together historical research and digital media to show the intersection of race, place, and identity in midcentury America. It is an example of how digital tools can preserve cultural history.