Piedmont University’s Lillian E. Smith Center hosted “The Civil Rights Movement in Northeast Georgia,” a first-of-its-kind program for educators, June 13-17.
Lillian E. Smith attended Piedmont for one year, 1915-16. She was a social justice activist and acclaimed author of Strange Fruit and Killers of the Dream. The Lillian E. Smith (LES) Center is located at the site of the former Laurel Falls Camp for Girls in Clayton, Georgia, where Smith lived and worked.
“With this program, we are carrying on the legacy of Lillian E. Smith through a multidisciplinary program that focuses on pedagogy and the weaving together of history, literature, science, and the arts,” Teutsch said. “Facilitators Dr. Jacqueline Jones Royster, Dr. Dywanna Smith, Marie Cochran, Audrey Davenport, Ife Williams, and Piedmont faculty Dr. Rebecca Godwin, Dr. Julia Schmitz, and Rebecca Brantley provided participants with a wide-ranging experience connecting the region to the nation and the world.”
One educator who took part in the new program was Amanda Myrick, an eighth-grade teacher at Sutton Middle School in Atlanta. She said she has homework to do after the LES experience.
“I’ve been able to find artwork that I didn’t even know existed, and now I have a ton of authors to research because I got their names while here,” Myrick said.
“Any information I can get about artwork, songs, music, or writers that were in Northeast Georgia during that time supporting the Civil Rights Movement or fighting the good fight – I want to bring that to my students.”
Myrick also connected with a presenter, visual artist Marie Cochran, the founding curator of the Affrilachian Artist Project. Myrick was familiar with Cochran’s work and was excited to speak with her.
“I use one of her videos in my class. Now I have her contact information, and she said she would be more than happy to do a Zoom with my class,” Myrick said.
Twyla Bryant will begin teaching eighth-grade Georgia Studies and English Language Arts at C.W. Davis Middle School in Flowery Branch this fall. She said the LES educators program exposed her to history she hadn’t learned about before.
“It is interesting to go to different counties and hear different stories,” she said. “We’ve been learning about seeking out different narratives. Learning through other lenses is important. I want to share this with my students through innovative and creative lesson planning because art is how we all communicate.”