Educators across the country will now have access to extensive Civil Rights movement documents, thanks to a Web site designed by Dorothy Vasquez-Levy, an assistant professor in the University's Curry School.
Driven by a desire to educate students on recent history, Vasquez-Levy has embarked on a mission to make the expansive database available to teachers and students everywhere.
Vasquez-Levy is now conducting research to develop a Web site serving as a "content-based curriculum" for teachers K-12.
The database will incorporate a vast spectrum of multimedia resources. Vasquez-Levy has acquired close to 400 oral histories of actual Civil Rights activists that will appear on the site in the form of live footage.
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With the help of Education School officials, Vasquez-Levy acquired more than $300,000 in funding from the Jesse Ball du Pont Fund as well as the Public Broadcasting System.
In addition to mass media, the "Social Justice: History and Education Resource" will contain diaries, photos, demographic data and letters that activists wrote.
Vasquez-Levy conducted a survey in which she discovered most teachers do not have access to a formal curriculum for teaching the Civil Rights movement, which she believes makes it difficult to introduce the period to students.
"With this project, I am able to bring together my passions for educating and social change in such a way to work with teachers to generate a curriculum to work for students in their classrooms," she said.
Teachers will have the opportunity to tap into a primary resource so students can see real people fighting for equal rights, she added.
Vasquez-Levy, along with a team of graduate researchers from the University, has worked closely with the University of Alabama and the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to acquire primary sources for the database.
"The general consensus of the Institute is that the project will instill more interest in the Civil Rights movement and move things in a positive direction," said Wayne Coleman, Birmingham Civil Rights Institute archivist who has been working closely with project.
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