Maymester 2024

As part of a one million-dollar Mellon Foundation grant running from 2020-2025 for which she was co-PI, Valerie Babb originated a new study-away course, “Archiving Reconstruction, Civil Rights, and Sea Island Culture.” Students were introduced to the "on-the-ground" history of Reconstruction and Civil Rights movement strategy through classwork, research in the Rose Library archives, and a study away collaboration with the Penn Center National Historic Landmark where they joined students from other area universities: Morehouse, Spelman, University of Georgia, and University of North Carolina, among others on St. Helena Island, South Carolina at the Penn Center. They learned about Gullah Geechee history and culture and explored Penn Center archives relating to the strategizing meetings held by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Students were able to see the house where, during renovation, drafts of what became the “I Have A Dream Speech” were discovered. They were able to walk to the Penn Center dock and see the retreat house built for Martin Luther King, Jr, as a quiet space of reflection that, sadly, he ever saw because of his assassination.

Students participated in an Indigo-dying workshop while learning about this heritage crop’s importance to black culture. They also made excursions to the Barnwell Tabby Archaeological Research and Excavation Project, Mitchelville Freedom Park (located on the site of what was once a self-governed community of the formerly enslaved), and learned about common concerns in Gullah Geechee communities: legal land theft, heirs’ property rights, ownership of cultural production, and sustaining land and heritage. Additionally, three members of the VisionintoArt interdisciplinary art production company based in New York City—Jeffrey Zeigler, Ras Dia, and Daniel Oxenhandler--spent a portion of Week 2 participating in various meals and programs of the residencies.