By Stacy Moak, Professor of Political Science and Public Administration
The Titusville neighborhood presents a unique learning opportunity for students studying Urban Politics at UAB. For the past 2 years, students in Urban Politics (PS 120) have had the learning experience of partnering with the residents of Titusville and helping to uncover historic significance and community voice while simultaneously learning about the history of segregation, the politics of historic preservation, and working together as a team for community engaged scholarship. None of this rich learning would have been possible without willing community partners who made themselves available and assisted students in this journey.
As a professor for more than 30 years, I have come to understand that students learn more by engaging in the project they are studying. When I was developing my Urban politics course, I had no problem choosing readings for the academic component of the class. Students read “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” by Richard Rothstein. They also read articles about the politics of preservation, and art as a tool for community building. However, to truly engage with the concept, students need to be exposed to a neighborhood where they can see these issues play out in real life. Given that UAB sits in the Titusville neighborhood, it provides the perfect partnership for exploring these structural issues. In addition, Titusville has always been a historically Black community with both residential and commercial businesses owned and operated by Black residents. After the initial contact with the Titusville Development Corporation, we were able to begin a partnership that would continue to grow with each semester.
For engaged scholarship to be sustainable, the relationship must be reciprocal. Accordingly, not only should the students benefit, but the community should also benefit from the relationship. Accordingly, I discussed with TDC what type of project would be valuable to the community. Ronald Bayles referred me to Paula Stanton who chairs the historic marker committee for the neighborhood. I met with Paula, and we discussed that the neighborhood had already identified multiple sites within it that have historic importance. However, many of these stories are not documented. We decided that a good project for students would be for them to help uncover the stories of these places and document these stories through short films.
To improve the quality of the final products, and to engage more students in this endeavor, I partnered with an art professor who teaches 4-D design. We decided to have students work in teams with political science students researching the places and political processes of the past and present, and Art students to produce visual effects through film and interviews. Students were allowed to select their own place from the list of places provided by the community. We matched the teams along their preferred location. Each team had at least one art student and at least one political science student on the team. Accordingly, in addition to learning about urban politics and history of oppression of this important neighborhood, students had the added benefit of learning to work as a team across two diverse disciplines. Some of the most important learning came from the team-based approach.
Students visited the Birmingham public library archive department to find out what they could discover about their unique locations. To their surprise, most of them found very little information. As we discussed in class, historic records are never collected for the purpose of preserving history – they are collected for a completely different purpose, such as mortgage records, appraisals for bank records, land surveys also for mortgages. Most Black citizens did not have access to traditional mortgages during the Jim Crowe periods of the south. As such, many land transactions were not recorded in this traditional sense. Furthermore, newspapers were segregated as well, and only the more affluent white newspapers were archived in the libraries through “clippings.” Thus, transactions and activities of Black citizens, including businesses, were often not covered in the news. Students were dismayed. How could they possibly tell the story of an historic place without any historic records? The most obvious option was to conduct interviews with people who had personal experiences in these places. Through our strong community partners, students were invited into the homes and offices of prominent community members and were able to record memories and stories of these places.
In the end, students produced short videos (between 3 and 5 minutes in length) that relayed the story of place through the eyes of those who lived the experience. These videos were then given to the history marker community and will appear on this website as a way to document such an important legacy that Titusville contributed to Birmingham. Students presented these short films in public, one semester at UAB, and more recently in the space that was Birmingham Memorial Company. This last presentation was particularly exciting because Birmingham Memorial Company was one of the sites covered through the student project. Mr. Marion Sterling opened the building to us, provided decorations for the event, and invited community members who came and engaged in community dialogue with the students.
“Being able to physically go out and talk to people and participate in the process made learning not only easier but gave me a deeper and more personal connection and understanding of the content.
Working on this project has been a privilege, and I love learning more about the city I am studying in.”
“I feel so lucky to have had the experience of interacting with these amazing people.”
“I feel a renewed sense of duty to public service…”
“…we were welcomed into people’s homes. The people we spoke to were kind and excited to share their knowledge and expertise. I am extremely appreciative that I was able to meet and speak to these people through this class.”
Aside from academic learning, the larger picture of why this is so important is multi-faceted. First, students are more committed to learning that has real application and is tied to the lives of real people. Theoretically understanding neighborhood dynamics is important, but really understanding the lived experience of neighborhood residents creates more incentive to participate in local government and to be concerned about local issues. Students simply become more aware of their surroundings and the policies that impact them. Additionally, helping to preserve the unique history of a community like Titusville provides an active way for students to give back to a community that has been so important to the history of the overall city of Birmingham; a history that might otherwise be lost due to historical processes that didn’t preserve much Black history. These two factors combine to provide a win for both the academic components of this class and for the neighborhood residents living in Titusville. I hope to continue this partnership over time and continue offering UAB students such a unique learning opportunity.