By Kate Hayden Our team was in the very early stages of developing this concept and exploring potential communities and schools when Ben Raines first discovered the Clotilda wreckage in 2018. Indeed, in late 2019, we had prepared to pitch this idea first to the City of Birmingham as a response to the Birmingham Promise Program unveiled earlier that year. Then in the spring of 2020, everything got pushed to the side as the college (and the world) shifted under the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each member of the team suddenly found their roles changing as the college moved their courses online and helped students find safe housing off campus to finish out the term. It was not until the spring of 2021 that the team found the capacity to pick up where we left off. At that point, the grant funding landscape had changed dramatically. But in late spring, early summer of 2021, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine released a call for proposals aimed at exactly what we were trying to do – helping create new leaders in STEMM (the extra “M” is for medicine) with an emphasis on environmental justice and climate change. The only stipulation was that we were required to center our project on a community within the Gulf Coast. Now one could argue that Birmingham, Alabama is a part of or has a direct impact on the Gulf Coast itself, but we wanted to partner with a community that was closer to the coast. Indeed, it was the recent press releases of the Clotilda discovery that drew our attention to Africatown. Through many conversations with representatives from C.H.E.S.S., ACF and the MCTS Alumni Association, we felt that Africatown and MCTS would be the perfect community to pilot our project. And we believe the timing is also ideal. "File:Detail of Cudjoe Lewis marker.jpg" by Womump is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Marker and memorial for Cudjoe (Cudjo) Kazoola Lewis. One of the last survivors of the Clotilda and one of the original founders of Africatown. For years, Cudjoe Lewis was thought to be the last survivor of the Clotilda and has been interviewed many times throughout history. His testimony and story has been recorded in Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston. The last known survivor of the Cloltida is actually Matilda McCrear. Matilda died in Selma, Al. in 1940 (5 years after Cudjoe's death). The discovery of the Clotilda has led to a media frenzy in Africatown, drawing the public eye from documentaries, reports, books and interviews across multiple popular platforms. Coupled with this new public interest, recent articles have detailed the multiple lawsuits citing industrial pollution and unethical zoning laws which have highlighted the environmental and human injustices this community has long suffered. As Vince described earlier, the most essential component of our project is the development of a community of practice (CoP), where all stakeholders have opportunities to collaborate and share knowledge and resources. We believe an effective CoP is vitally important at a time like this when new agencies and outside interests are trying to converge in aiding Africatown. A CoP can help protect and prioritize the interests of Africatown residents, students, and businesses while appropriately funneling resources were needed based on their expectations (and not the expectations of outside interests). We view our role as simply providing a framework and resources to support this CoP while also piloting a novel curriculum for MCTS students. Since getting funded only four months ago:
This concludes our four part debut blog post on Giving Voice to a Wish. I would like to thank our readers for their patience and hope that these few blog posts have provided a better understanding our of mission, our motivation and our future plans. If you missed Parts 1 through 3 of this series, you can find them in the links below: Giving Voice to a Wish Part 1: Prologue Giving Voice to a Wish Part 2: Why us? Giving Voice to a Wish Part 3: Why Africatown? Again, thank you to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Gulf Coast Research program for funding this project, teachers and administrators from MCTS, our community partners, and of course to our generous readers who take time out of their busy day to follow our story. If you would like to partner with us, have something to share, or simply want to offer your support, please leave a comment below. Funding for this project is supported by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine under award number 2000013203. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Gulf Research Program or the National Academics of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
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AuthorThis is a collaborative blog with multiple authors from our community of practice focused on the community of Africatown in Mobile, Al. Archives
August 2023
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