The Atlanta Student Movement Project involved with Kennesaw State is aiming to tell an untold history and celebrate the unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement.
Founded by Dr. Jeanne Law Bohannon, an Associate Professor of English at KSU, the project aims to shine a light on activists ignored in popular history.
Bohannon said the goal of the project is to “use digital storytelling strategies to correct the watered-down history of the Civil Rights Movement taught in secondary schools.”
Contributors to the project are creating a free and easily-accessible archive of news articles, legal documents and pictures from the early 1960s when the students of Atlanta’s historically black colleges and universities became leaders in the movement to end segregation.
The project’s SOAR website already houses 13 first-hand interviews and lectures with Atlanta Civil Rights veterans such as Lonnie King, Roslyn Pope and Norma June Davis.
Dozens of undergraduate and graduate students have taken part in writing articles, making podcasts, creating a visual timeline, transcribing videos and contributing hours of research for the project.
Raychle Wilkinson, a student researcher and previous co-coordinator of the Atlanta Student Movement Project’s Instagram page, spoke of the importance of the project.
“The people who were orchestrating the sit-ins and protests were college students just like we are, and the fact that college students don’t know other college students basically desegregated Georgia is a problem,” said Wilkinson.
The project has uncovered several stories that would have otherwise been lost to history, including an interview with Norma June Davis that revealed that she led the very first Freedom Ride in December 1960.
Bohannon got the idea for the project after talking with her grandmother, who revealed that, during the 1960s, she was an ally to people of color in the struggle for civil rights in Atlanta.
Bohannon then reached out to Dr. Lonnie King, who was a leader of the Atlanta Student Movement. King became the projects senior community partner in 2016 and provides valuable first-hand information involving both surviving and deceased members of The Atlanta Student Movement.
After receiving a $100,000 grant from the Rich Foundation, the project took off in 2017 and soon gained a university partner in KSU’s Department of Museums, Archives, and Rare Books, which allowed for the project to create a digital archive of its oral histories.
According to Bohannon, KSU archivists JoyEllen Freeman and Alissa Helms have played a major role in preserving the digital history of the project and in maintaining the project’s connections with Atlanta’s historic black colleges and universities.
The project plans to use the discovered artifacts and oral histories to create a state standard-aligned curriculum that intends on launching in Georgia high schools by December 2018.
Bohannon plans to start research projects on the Athens Student Movement and the Albany Student Movement once all the research for the Atlanta Student Movement Project is done.
Students and faculty interested in sharing information or stories about the Atlanta Student Movement can contact Bohannon at Jeanne.bohannon@kennesaw.edu.
To learn more about the Atlanta Student Movement Project, visit its affiliated KSU website.
For the sake of disclosure, this article has been updated since its original publishing to correct errors.
