Blog Post 6

In this course, we’ve talked about the effectiveness of the First Year Seminar and what could be done to improve it. I think adding components of this course into their curriculum would greatly improve the course. I understand that the first years visit the National Civil Rights Museum. This is a great start however the museum uses a national perspective to tell the story of the black freedom struggle. I think is it important to engage the first years with the history of Memphis’ civil rights struggle beyond what they probably already know about the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ strike. As we’ve learned in this class, Memphis’ history is so integral to understanding the social dynamic in Memphis today. In preparing the first years to go out into the city, they need an understanding of Memphis’ rich and unique history.

An additional piece to add to the First Year Seminar and as this course comes to an end, I am reflecting on all the knowledge I’ve gained, and what additions would have helped me to better understand the Civil Rights Struggle in Memphis. The best improvement to this course would be an exploration of the racial geography of the city. In all of the texts that we read, authors and scholars placed the events that they were describing at different locations in the city. Green gave geographical locations of the rapes of black women that she chronicled in part of her book. Kinchen placed the BOP at different locations throughout the city. Gritter chronicled the history Church Sr. and Bob Church throughout Memphis and on Beale Street. Jeffries paints a vivid geographical picture of the work that activists did Lowndes County, and Watkins illuminates the geographical history of Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Being able to see the neighborhoods that these scholars write about would have made the history more real in a sense. Reading Preston Lauterbach’s article and seeing pictures of the Churches’ family home made me understand the gravity of burning that home down. Seeing the history allows for an improved understanding of the events that happened.