Religion and Civil Rights

Preserving Stories of Faith

Summersell students meet with Reverend C.T. Vivian, a leader of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement

In the Jim Crow world of West Alabama, people of color faced crises of civil rights and faith. Working in partnership with black churches, Summersell students interview the people who struggled to gain equality and document the emergence of local civil rights movements.

Students immerse themselves in readings about the civil rights movement and meet with the men and women who led the movement in West Alabama.  Working with professional journalists, students learn how to conduct oral histories and draw up their their questions and goals for their interviews. Each student meets with a person who grew up in the Jim Crow South to record and transcribe his or her individual story. In doing so, they help create a new archive of stories about the local movement for racial equality.