Talking about Race—In and With the Public

 In the 1960s, the city of Greensboro, NC, played a pivotal role in the civil rights movement as the birthplace of the sit-in movement in which students occupied seats within lunch counters and restaurants that refused to serve people of color. In 1982, inspired by social protest movements of this nature, and in further refutation of the school’s segregated origins, the African American and African Diaspora Studies (AADS) at the University of North Carolina Greensboro began to take shape, serving as a nexus for the broader university as it fosters discourses and practices of racial equity. 

In the years since its founding, AADS has aimed to maintain exchange between the university and community. And a time when the state of North Carolina has advanced legislation that creates “an atmosphere antithetical to free speech and equity,” according to professor and AADS director Noelle Morrissette, it is all the more important to drive public discourse that recognizes more accurate and complete narratives about race in America and the broader African diaspora. 

With the help of a $100K grant from Mellon, AADS is developing a public curriculum that drives conversations about equity, diversity, and community-based action. AADS students are playing a prominent role by building out lesson plans, creating sharable content, and forging partnerships with community organizations across the museum, library, and educational sectors. Curricular materials and activities will include everything from banned books to soil collection ceremonies that remember victims of lynching. 

On what the activities mean for the university, Morrissette reflected, “As we meet the ‘Trayvon Generation’ as well as first-generation college students in our classrooms, contend with assaults on academic freedom, and build alliances through collaboration, we [are deepening] awareness of the intersectional power that is AADS.”