Giving

The Summersell Center is deeply grateful for your interest in supporting its projects and initiatives. Your patronage allows the Center to sustain a number of nationally recognized programs and build new relationships with community partners throughout the state.

Your gifts can support a range of opportunities that are vital to recapturing the state’s history and empowering a new generation of community leaders, including

  • History of Us: The first Black history course taught daily all year in an Alabama public school. It is now being adopted by high schools throughout Tuscaloosa and the state.
  • West Side Scholars Academy: A summer social justice program for middle schoolers that also meets two Saturdays per month in the school year.
  • Alabama Memory: An ongoing effort to recover every life lost to lynching in the state.
  • Queer History South: An oral history program dedicated to documenting the lives of queer citizens in West Alabama. It operates in partnership with Tuscaloosa Public Library.
  • Race and Injustice: A program that traces the evolution of civil rights and criminal justice in Alabama. It partners with the Safe House in Greensboro to take oral histories of local veterans of the civil rights movement in Hale County.
  • Summersell Scholars Program: A new leadership program for undergraduates and graduate students seeking to develop new community history programs and work in existing ones. It invites students to join leadership teams in its ongoing programs, to perform high-level research, and share their experiences through a weekly seminar and structured reflections.

Your support can also help grow new initiatives designed to sponsor undergraduate and graduate students who join the Summersell Center and study specific topics.

How to Give

Giving is quick, easy, and secure:

  • Open the University’s online giving page.
  • In the “Find your fund” search box, you can locate the Frances Sharpley Summersell Memorial Endowed Support Fund or follow this link to navigate directly to the giving portal for that fund..
  • Complete the remainder of the form, and then submit your information. You’ll be directed to the payment page. There’s also an option to share your gift on social media.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please email Dr. John Giggie, director of the Summersell Center, at jmgiggie@ua.edu.