Spring Hill College recently conducted a series of virtual workshops through a National Endowment for the Humanities grant-funded program, “From Clotilda to Community: The History of Mobile, Alabama’s Africatown”.  Seventy participants from 25 different states attended.

 

Spring Hill College is one of 11 awardees of a Landmarks of American History distinction for the series. The five-day workshop was designed to immerse K-12 educators in the history of Africatown, the 110 Africans who survived the slave ship Clotilda and the post-Civil War community of Mobile’s Africatown.

 

The workshop topics covered:

• Africatown videos: learning its history and significance
• History and legacy of slavery in the United States
• Teaching difficult topics in the classroom: lesson plan development

• Using media to bring the topic to life
• Creating a podcast series for student interaction

Ryan Noble, Associate Professor and Chair of the Communication Arts Department, led the project for Spring Hill. “The workshops were an amazing success,” Noble said. “The feedback was glowing and the quality of the interactive sessions was apparent as they were happening. Also, because we were virtual, we were able to have Sylviane Diouf and Natalie Robertson, the authors of the two most important books on Africatown, present to the group. We look forward to the possibility of doing the workshops again.”

 

The Landmarks Grant is a cooperative project between faculty members from Spring Hill College and the University of South Alabama. Noble is co-director of the grant along with Joe’l Lewis Billingsley, PhD, Associate Professor at the University of South Alabama.

 

Learn more: https://nehlandmarksafricatown.shc.edu/