Call for Applications: To Participate in the NEH funded K-12 Summer Workshop on the Long Civil Rights Movement: The Quest for Freedom

The Thomasville History Center invites applicants to take part in one of two identical one-week long workshops (July 9-14, 2023 or July 23-28, 2023) that will introduce K-12 teachers, home schoolers, and museum educators to a unique set of landmarks in Thomasville, Georgia. This workshop will provide an understanding of the continuity and change in the struggle of African Americans during the long civil rights movement from 1865 to the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954. Attendees of the Quest for Freedom will visit sites such as the Jack Hadley Black History Museum, the Imperial Hotel, a lodging listed in the Green Book that is undergoing renovation, the First Missionary Baptist Church, one of the oldest African American houses of worship in Southwest Georgia, and the gravesite of the first African American graduate of West Point, Henry O. Flipper.

This workshop will consider the essential role of the African American community in supporting the rise of Thomasville as an elite tourist resort during the Gilded Age (1870-1906). We will visit Pebble Hill Plantation, built by a prominent Northern business leader, to discover the ties that this hunting plantation and others had with the African American community. And the Thomasville History Center tells the history of the Red Hills Region and has an extensive archival collection that will complement many of our discussions.  Speakers at the workshop include Julia Brook, Jennifer Brooks, Le’Trice Donaldson, and Maxine Jones.  Gregory Mixon and G. Kurt Piehler are the Institute Co-Directors. 

The Quest for Freedom is funded with grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  For further information on the workshop and a link to on-line application, please visit: Thomasvilleneh.org.  The deadline for applications is March 3, 2023.  Those applicants selected to participate will receive as stipend of $1300 to defray their expenses. 

The dates of the workshops (with identical content):

*July 9 – 14, 2023

*July 23- 28, 2023