Wonderful news!
1619: The Making of America Project has received an NEH HBCU grant! We’ll be working on the matching fundraising over the spring semester as well as moving ahead on some of the major projects this grant covers. Keep an eye out for upcoming events here!
What have we been up to? Two month check-in
We apologize for the radio silence on this blog since the end of the conference. After it ended and we said goodbye to the wonderful new and old friends we met over the two days, we were all thrown back into the daily grind of teaching, grading and working on other projects. We have also been meeting regularly to discuss where do we go next. The conference brought together many members of the Hampton Roads community who are interested in the issues around 1619 and meetings have happened at college campuses and museums around the area to begin the planning for future events. You will see we have added a collaborators page to the site, and finally taken down all the schedule and registration pages for September’s conference. You will see them replaced in the future by registration information for future conferences and events. We are also working on several grant applications to find funding for the wonderful work the planning committee and scholars are doing on 1619 and the related issues. There is more coming from the 1619MOA community, please keep your eye on this space!
Novelists, Griots, Travel Writers, and Keepers of Sacred Stories
How can one know where he is going if he does not know where he came from? Novelists, griots, travel writers, and sacred storytellers are all forms of gatekeepers that help give us intimate looks into the accounts of our history. The panel discussion on literary translations of 1619 examined how the past has, and can survive in a changing world. Chronicling the good and bad of America in 1619 has taken on many forms in the past centuries. Folklore has quite arguably, been the only way early American culture has been kept alive. Native American culture has an array of legends and myths used by ancestors to describe and explain natural phenomena, the earth and its creation, and ways of conduct. Christopher Columbus and John Smith are important figures in European-American myth, often viewed as heroes and symbols of independence, revolution, and conquest. Along with tactics for planting and landscaping introduced by Africans, Negro Spirituals tell of the oppression they faced as slaves in America, as well as hope and joy garnered from thoughts of better days in Heaven. Examples of culture being passed down through word-of-mouth are evident everywhere. They show how America’s early inhabitants remembered, and continue to remember, 1619. The theme of recognizing the antecedents and foreshadowing events as guides to the future is clearly, well-developed in numerous arenas. The idea of always being in a state of becoming, or building on that which came before, in order to better understand the future, is an early pattern. When asked how we as Americans can continue to remember the events on and surrounding 1619, the room hushed as Dr. Cathy Jackson, of Norfolk State University, responded by reading an old African folktale, and stating, “We need to listen.”