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[PAST EVENT] Whispers in the sound of silence: Pathways for African American cemetery dialog in K-12 classrooms

April 4, 2023
7pm
Location
Zoom meeting
Access & Features
  • Open to the public
  • Registration/RSVP
panelists

Lemon's Legacies Porch Talks in Spring 2023 will focus on the theme of the 13th Annual Lemon Project Spring Symposium: "At the Root: Exploring Black Life, History, and Culture."

The African American Cemetery Education Tampa Bay project was created in response to the rediscovery of 10 erased African American cemeteries in the Tampa region. The project aims to 1) curate descendent oral histories associated with erased African American cemeteries, 2) elevate community oral histories as primary sources through co-created K-12 curricular resources, 3) preserve and memorialize erased African American cemetery spaces through collaborative community/student experiential learning. Through the shared experiences of an anthropologist, education graduate students, and a cemetery education specialist, this panel explores ways K-12 education can create opportunities for African American communities to tell their stories and open space for difficult history and social justice conversations in the classroom. The destruction and erasure of segregated African American cemeteries create past and present silences distorting perceptions of local place identity and history disenfranchising community knowledge associated with erased cemeteries and difficult histories. Although local communities try to engage local school districts in issues of local difficult history, education institutions struggle to incorporate these histories into curricular materials. This panel addresses the following question to open dialogue between researchers, educators, and communities silenced by the erasure of African American cemeteries. In what ways can preservation through K-12 experiential learning open new pathways for community empowerment? Along the way, we share our successes and failures in establishing best practices for including African American cemeteries and local history in K-12 classrooms, which are community-centered.

Panelists:

  • Dr. Shannon Peck-Bartle is an African American cemetery education specialist. She is the founder of the African American Cemetery Alliance Tampa Bay, Director of the Rose Hill Cemetery Project, and Board President of Special Angels Investments– an organization dedicated to the preservation and memorialization of erased cemeteries through education.
  • Dr. Lisa Armstrong is the Director of Community Engagement for Special Angels Investments. She specializes in heritage studies, Family and Community Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, and ethnographic research methodologies.
  • Cassidy Gomez is a graduate student in the College of Education at the University of South Florida and a teacher with the Hillsborough County School District.
  • Andrew Chestnut is a graduate student in the College of Education at the University of South Florida and a teacher with the Hillsborough County School District.
  • Adam Tidd is a graduate student in the College of Education at the University of South Florida and a teacher with Florida Virtual Schools
Contact

Sarah Thomas, [[lemon]]