Summer 2002: Participants

UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

Ashley DeFlanders (Tougaloo '05) is an English major at Tougaloo College and looked forward to exploring Brown because of its differences from Tougaloo. At the same time, she sought to make a contribution to Tougaloo College "an institution that is profoundly impacting my daily life." Ashley was particularly interested in working on the web site and looking at the writings in the Archives as examples of African American literature.

Ilana Friedman (Brown '04) spent a previous summer in the Dominican Republic as a supervisor of nine volunteers supporting local youth groups and has worked as an art teacher at the East Harlem School in New York city. At Brown she has taken several African American history courses, helped organize a community garden, and coordinated a Hillel forum on mixed Jewish heritage. Her organizational experience and her time spent working in groups, added to her knowledge of African American history and her interest in writing a senior thesis in American Civilization, made her a valuable participant in this project. You can find a link to her senior thesis, which grew out of her research in Mississippi, under Student Work.

Tiffany Joseph (Brown '04) was a Brown sophomore and a Memphis native who came to New England for high school as well as college. She wanted to return to the South to learn more about the Civil Rights movement. Tiffany will major in Ethnic Studies and Sociology and remains particularly interested in Brown's "legacy as it relates to African-Americans via its involvement with Tougaloo in the Civil Rights Movement." You can find a link to her senior thesis, which grew out of her research in Mississippi, under Student Work. Tiffany has since undertaken graduate studies in sociology at the University of Michigan.

Nicholas Kimble (Tougaloo '05) is a double major in history and political science at Tougaloo College where he maintains a 3.95 grade point average. He enjoys traveling with his family, especially to museums, and has gone as far as Okinawa, Japan. Nicholas has worked in the Sonny Montgomery Medical Center Publication Department interviewing veterans about their contributions in the Armed Forces and his experience helped with the oral histories included in this project.

Sherrice Perry (Brown '06) was a Brown freshman from California who wanted to learn more about the Civil Rights Movement. She has taken 6 courses in the Africana Studies Department at Brown and hopes to major in Africana Studies and Political Science. She writes: "as an African American young woman, I feel lost in today's society. I feel as though I do not have a connection with my history that ultimately makes me who I am" and sought to provide better information to students about African American history than she learned.

BROWN GRADUATE STUDENT

Gabriel Mendes was a first year graduate student in the Department of American Civilization. He holds a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard, where Cornel West served as his academic advisor, and a BA from Hobart and William Smith Colleges where he majored in Africana and Religious Studies. Gabriel held administrative positions with the Higher Education Opportunity Program at Bard College before returning to graduate school at Brown.

TOUGALOO FACULTY AND STAFF

Ernie Limbo, Associate Professor, History, Tougaloo. Professor Limbo is a specialist in Southern religious history and teaches courses in the Civil Rights movement, among many others, at Tougaloo. Professor Limbo supervised student research in the Tougaloo Archives.

Alma Fisher, Archivist, Tougaloo. Ms. Fisher has responsibility for the Tougaloo College Archives and recently completed a comprehensive archives training program for archives staff working in Historically Black Colleges and Universities offered by Spelman College and partially funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

BROWN FACULTY AND STAFF

Susan Smulyan, Associate Professor of American Civilization, Brown. Professor Smulyan is a twentieth century cultural historian with interests in race and popular culture. She visited Tougaloo in March 2001 and this collaboration grows out of that exchange. Professor Smulyan took charge of the web site, writing the explanatory material and organizing the database.

James Campbell, Associate Professor of Africana Studies, American Civilization and History, Brown. Professor Campbell is a historian of Africa and African America, having published an award winning book on the AME Church. He is the only historian on the Brown campus teaching twentieth century African American history. Professor Campbell supervised the research activities of the students.

Joyce Foster, Associate Dean, Brown. Dean Foster has a PhD in anthropology and an interest in African Americans and higher education. Dean Foster remains interested in the interdisciplinary possibilities of the students' research project. At Brown, she takes charge of, among other programs, the Mellon Minority Undergraduate Fellowships. Dean Foster helped with the first summer of the project when the students visited Brown.

Sakena Young-Scaggs, Associate Protestant University Chaplain, Brown. The Reverend Young-Scaggs was particularly interested in researching the Tougaloo Chapel and provided insights into African American religious history. The Reverend Young-Skaggs helped with the first summer of the project when the students visited Brown.

BROWN SCHOLARLY TECHNOLOGY GROUP

Kerri Hicks, Senior Production Analyst. Kerri came to the Scholarly Technology Group from Brown's Academic Computing group where she developed and taught web publishing among other things. Kerri specializes in dynamic database driven sites. She is also a graduate of Colby College and a playwright. Ms. Hicks took primary responsibility for development of the web site and database.

Julia Flanders, Women Writers Project Director and Associate Director for Textbase Development. Julia has worked at the Women Writers Project since 1992. The Women Writers Project has worked to provide an SGML encoded full text database of pre Victorian women's writing in English, recently published as Women Writers Online. Julia is an expert in databases and encoding.

David Reville, former STG Interim Director and Associate Director for Communication and Systems. David coordinated web design and development for STG and its affiliates, and led projects with strong electronic publication components, including: What Did You Do in the War, Grandma?, and The Whole World was Watching: an oral history of 1968, and the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning. Mr. Reville later moved on to serve as the director of StoryCorps, a project to collect the nation's stories in sound.

GRAPHICS DESIGN

Robin A.F. Olson, Creative Director, Ultra Maroon Design. Robin created the overall look and feel of the Freedom Now! web site. She has been designing award-winning graphics for web and print since 1986. In addition to her design talents, Robin is a copywriter and co-author of two books on Adobe Illustrator. She holds a BFA in Visual Communication Design from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. When not being creative, you'll most likely find Robin doing animal rescue.

Academic Year 2002-2003: Examining the Brown-Tougaloo Cooperative Exchange

Ilana Friedman and Tiffany Joseph returned to work on the project as did Professors Campbell, Smulyan, and the STG. They were joined by:

Danny Doncan (Brown '05) wrote that "this project furthers my interest in the social sciences as well as continuing my scholarly work on issues relating to African-Americans. As a concentrator in political science, I bring a highly critical approach to this project, looking for a way to use archival research. As an African-American, I have personal interest in discovering the relationship between Brown and Tougaloo, and how this relationship affected African-Americans." Danny spent the academic year 2003-2004 studying in Paris.

Will Tucker (Brown '05) is a student of Africana Studies and Public Policy and an active member of various on-campus political groups, which gives him a useful vantage point from which to view the research about the Brown-Tougaloo exchange. Will's senior thesis in Africana Studies was titled "Yellow Panthers: Internationalism, Interracial Organizing and Intercommunal Solidarity."

Niketa Williams (Brown '04) is a joint African Studies and Biomed concentrator who plans to attend medical school. She is from Shreveport, Louisiana and has been interested in studying historically black colleges.

Kia Jackson (Tougaloo '05) spent the summer of 2003 at Brown working in the Brown University Archives, scanning documents for the web site and making database entries.

Brianna Larkin (Brown '06) worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the summer of 2004, helping organize the database and researching and writting lesson plans for the Teaching section of the web site.