New Institute to Empower Teachers to Engage with Black History

A new National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) program at Alabama A&M University will offer summer professional development institutes for teachers and summer programs for K-12 students. Earlier this year, the NEH announced that AAMU was among awardees of over $41 million in grant funding to support projects nationwide. The grants target history and English teachers who are looking for ways to contextualize the social and political climate in educating students. Dr. Nathan Blom, Dr. Stacy Carter, and Veronica D. Henderson are leading the AAMU project – From Alabama to New York: How the Great Migration Shaped the Harlem Renaissance.

Carter, Interim Chair of the Department of Social Sciences, has extensively studied the connections of The Great Migration and The Harlem Renaissance. “This is a story that was told but can be written in a different light,” says Carter. “The connection of The Great Migration and The Harlem Renaissance have not been explored deeply, which historically is very important. Leaving room to connect these stories through this institute as well."

“If we trace our history or heritage we can find somewhere in there that our family was affected by The Great Migration in some way. Also, there are several people in Alabama who were part of the Harlem Renaissance or of the period immediately after that. In 1900, W.C. Handy became the band director at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College in Normal, Alabama (present-day Alabama A&M University). He later went on to become a famous American blues composer and musician who was later affected by the Harlem Renaissance.” 

Veronica Henderson, Director of the Alabama State Black Archives and the Interim Director of the LRC, was also an equal partner in bringing the institute to life. Carter and Henderson serve as content experts while Blom’s expertise is in Pedagogy, taking texts and making the teaching of texts more engaging. 

“Our goal is for participants of the Institute to leave with some type of curriculum that goes back to the schools, school districts, and classrooms to educate the young adults,” says Carter. “This is a good institute to help us control the narrative along with telling the story of African American people and their successes. Students should gain the knowledge and they deserve to know more about who they are as a person.” 

Blom says the Institute also aims to empower teachers to engage students through the subject. 

“I hope the teachers that come to our institute will leave it in a way that will allow them to go into their classrooms not only with an understanding of these historical facts but with the tools they need to teach the students engagingly,” he says. 

The institute will be accepting 25 qualified participants nationwide starting in June of 2024. And is arranged in three components. An online component will allow participants to receive the literature and the topics for the background of The Great Migration and The Harlem Renaissance. The second phase will take place on campus at the State Black Archives along with some of the historical black features of Huntsville. Next, the committee will travel to the cities of Birmingham and Montgomery to explore more of African American History. The last component of the institute will be to fly to Columbia University to get a more in-depth point-of-view of the locations of the Harlem Renaissance. The NEH Grant allows the selected candidates free travel and admissions expenses along with a stipend.