College Students and the Civil Rights Movement in Tuscaloosa, AL
Documentary Final Projects
Spring 2017
Welcome!
Students enrolled in my AAST 303/AMS 303 Southern Black Education History course created short documentaries as their final projects. Organized in small groups, students were assigned a specific topic that explored the history of college students’ activism and/or resistance to the struggle for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa.
Students first researched and wrote a short paper based on their respective topic grounded in primary and secondary sources. Using this common knowledge, each group then developed a documentary employing raw footage of events, visual sources, music, oral histories, and other sources and drafted a 500-word abstract. In the process, they unearthed the untold stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Tuscaloosa through archival research and oral histories. Each documentary demonstrate that the activism (and in some instances resistance) by University of Alabama and Stillman College students should be included in any history of the Civil Rights Movement. Through this process, in other words, they were proud to learn and share the story.
In addition, one documentary comes from independent study that provided deeper understanding of the course materials from the Spring 2015 version of the course. After providing historical context of the development of southern black education and its influence nationally on urban/suburban school districts, Pirela-Jones interviewed a family member in order to better understand her educational journey in relation to her own. The documentary is divided into two parts.
Note: These students are not professional. Both the documentaries and abstracts are presented without any editing on my part for grammatical errors and technical errors. These slight imperfections should not detract from the content.
As of 2020, students have opted to remove these students projects after the requested 3 year period of available. With the May 2020 death of Rev. Thomas Linton, one student group, some of whom are currently UA graduate students, have made their short documentary-"Riding for Rights" available again. Below is the documentary and original abstracts created for the 2015 documentaries.
Group 1: "1956 Enrollment of Autherine Lucy"
Group 2: "Fulfilling his ‘Duty’: The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door"
Group 3: "Chasing a Birthright: The Departure of James A. Hood"
Group 4: "The Tenure and Graduation of Vivian Malone: A Documentary"
Group 5: "Riding for Rights: The Story of the Stillman Bus Boycotts"
Group 6: "Stillman College Students and Bloody Tuesday"
Group IS: “No Dogs, No Negroes, No Mexicans”
Students enrolled in my AAST 303/AMS 303 Southern Black Education History course created short documentaries as their final projects. Organized in small groups, students were assigned a specific topic that explored the history of college students’ activism and/or resistance to the struggle for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa.
Students first researched and wrote a short paper based on their respective topic grounded in primary and secondary sources. Using this common knowledge, each group then developed a documentary employing raw footage of events, visual sources, music, oral histories, and other sources and drafted a 500-word abstract. In the process, they unearthed the untold stories of the Civil Rights Movement in Tuscaloosa through archival research and oral histories. Each documentary demonstrate that the activism (and in some instances resistance) by University of Alabama and Stillman College students should be included in any history of the Civil Rights Movement. Through this process, in other words, they were proud to learn and share the story.
In addition, one documentary comes from independent study that provided deeper understanding of the course materials from the Spring 2015 version of the course. After providing historical context of the development of southern black education and its influence nationally on urban/suburban school districts, Pirela-Jones interviewed a family member in order to better understand her educational journey in relation to her own. The documentary is divided into two parts.
Note: These students are not professional. Both the documentaries and abstracts are presented without any editing on my part for grammatical errors and technical errors. These slight imperfections should not detract from the content.
As of 2020, students have opted to remove these students projects after the requested 3 year period of available. With the May 2020 death of Rev. Thomas Linton, one student group, some of whom are currently UA graduate students, have made their short documentary-"Riding for Rights" available again. Below is the documentary and original abstracts created for the 2015 documentaries.
Group 1: "1956 Enrollment of Autherine Lucy"
Group 2: "Fulfilling his ‘Duty’: The Stand in the Schoolhouse Door"
Group 3: "Chasing a Birthright: The Departure of James A. Hood"
Group 4: "The Tenure and Graduation of Vivian Malone: A Documentary"
Group 5: "Riding for Rights: The Story of the Stillman Bus Boycotts"
Group 6: "Stillman College Students and Bloody Tuesday"
Group IS: “No Dogs, No Negroes, No Mexicans”
