Webinar On-Demand: 1619 Impact Through Community Engagement

Part of the ‘1619’ Impact Showcase, including "1619 Impact on Educators and Instruction," and "1619 Impact on Students and Classrooms.” 

In this educator panel from The 1619 Impact Series, grantees Jordan Campbell (The Affrilachia Project), Shauntrice Martin (Black Arts District), and Joe Seamons (Harmonies of Heritage) present projects that engaged educators and students through community programming and education in out-of-school-time spaces. View this webinar to learn more about the impact of their community-based work.

Key Highlights:

• Jordan Campbell reflected on the community-wide impact of The Affrilachia Project, “We built empathy and critical thinking on topics around erasure and local Black history and the Black experience in Appalachia. This program created a foundation for sustained community healing and inclusive education, and my favorite part of this whole thing: We were able to engage more than just youth. The word got out in the Black churches in our community and the senior citizens were so excited about this. They said, 'we want to be a part of this,' and so we actually had them come in for one of the sessions, and they told stories of their youth and their upbringing as African-American citizens in a divided community in the 20th century. That project has now snowballed and we are doing an oral history project with the University of Kentucky on Black senior experience and their life experiences. We don't want to lose those narratives and I'm so grateful to 1619 and Pulitzer Center because that has now engaged another section of our community.”
• Shauntrice Martin shared the framing Black Arts District used to introduce their project to the community, “One of the first questions when I kind of introduced this idea to our community members was, ‘what does building a Black Arts District have to do with the 1619 Project?’ So many of our community members had read one of the books from the 1619 Project, or they had just heard about it, so when we talk about our interpretation, the biggest thing was everyone wants to protect Black history. Here in Kentucky, there is often legislation introduced to ban Black history or to fine teachers in school districts for teaching any sort of cultural studies. Our mission has been to basically protect Black history… Our kickoff event before we got deep into our trainings was Black Future Fest, where we had over 500 individuals participate. We had students, we had elders, we had folks who were millennial, basically intergenerational, everyone came from the West End of Louisville and beyond in order to celebrate Black history.”
• In his reflection on why the work of the Harmonies of Heritage team was important for all community members, Joe Seamons shared, “Whether you are Black or not contemplating, understanding, and internalizing the lessons of the Black American experience in this country is vital to your heritage and understanding of yourself as an American… I think the 1619 Project was part of like helping surface that knowledge with a lot more people.”