Documenting Milledgeville's African American History

FAIN: PY-263696-19

Georgia College and State University (Milledgeville, GA 31061-3375)
Shaundra Walker (Project Director: May 2018 to August 2022)

This project will expand the community’s cultural heritage by digitizing materials documenting the area’s African American history. The opportunity to highlight the community’s lived experience capitalizes upon existing community-led/involved efforts on this topic. Community members will receive training in caring and preserving their cultural heritage materials and will have their materials scanned for their own personal use. If elected, their materials will be included in local, regional and national digital repositories. Selected items will be featured in a traveling exhibit that will visit several sites of cultural significance. A humanities scholar will lead a lecture that will use the history of a historic community school to engage participants in a discussion of the history of the community. Community griots will also speak briefly at the lecture. By focusing on several areas of cultural significance, this project will leverage the community’s pride in their stories.

Associated Products

Documenting African American Milledgeville (Exhibition)
Title: Documenting African American Milledgeville
Curator: Evan Leavitt
Abstract: This exhibit will reflect on how the African American community has made change. Throughout the twentieth century, African American women and men gained incremental advances that collectively would transform the race’s agency, the self-determination to act independently and make their own free choices. African Americans, by creating their own organizations and institutions, developed ways to address their needs and aspirations that fostered the values of community, service, and mutual support. At the center of this community were African American women. Whether engaged in professional or domestic work, or operating simply as members of working-class families aspiring for middle-class status, women played essential roles in the community-building process. African American women structured community life around a core of essential institutions: families, churches, education, clubs, hospitals, and health clinics, from which manifested the potential of social service reform activism. Recognizing these important communities is central to understanding the multiple and important roles of African Americans in the American story. These are stories of perseverance, resourcefulness, and resilience.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://specialcollectionsgalleries.gcsu.edu/common-heritage/
Primary URL Description: This is a link to the virtual exhibit that accompanies the traveling exhibit for the grant.

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