Caged Birds: The Story of the Youth in the Civil Rights Movement of Americus, Georgia in 1963

Much has been written on the history of the civil rights movement in the U.S. South during the 1960s. Historians have devoted most of their attention to the movement in the urban South and the role of adults. We need more attention to the activism of young people, especially in the small-town and rural South. My thesis shines a light on the youth-led civil rights movement in Americus, Georgia, in the summer and fall of 1963. I focus on the story of thirty-two Black girls who, after being arrested at a protest in Americus, were detained in the Leesburg Stockade, a decrepit Civil War-era building. My thesis investigates what happened, how it was covered at the time, how some of the women recalled their experiences, and how efforts continue to memorialize this significant but still not well-known episode in civil rights history. I hope that my work will reinforce the case for more academic and public attention to the historical contributions of young people to the ongoing Black freedom movement

Bringing Black Feminist's Thoughts, Self-Definitions, and Creative Agency to Digital Media and Technology Design

Users from marginalized groups are often faced with the challenges that result from a lack of diverse thought in the design and implementation of media and technologies that we engage in our daily lives. It is these artifacts that result in the harm, erasure, and hyper-surveillance of Black and Brown people. We seek to disrupt problematic narratives present in tech and design fields by (re)inserting Black Feminism and leveraging our personal experiences to build on design methods. Though research centered on the importance of women’s experiences and standpoints in tech practice is crucial, feminist scholarship has not always reflected the values and the liberation of women who are not white. This paper uses personal narrative to argue for the value of Black feminist thought and methods in the sub-disciplines of computing, such as digital media, human computer interaction (HCI) and human-centered computing (HCC)

‘I takes freedom:’ A Digital Project on Black Youth and their Practice of Resistance from 1865-1914.

When we try to imagine slavery and the emancipation era in the United States, the experiences and activism of black children rarely come to mind. This IS focuses on the lived experiences of black youth within the period of 1865-1914 and looks specifically at topics such as slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the making of Jim Crow. Additionally, as a digital IS I hope that my audience can fully understand the challenges that black youth faced during the period through a virtual museum. In conclusion, I hope, this project allows for the user of the digital environment to gain a new perspective on the impact that black children’s activism and resistance had in the South from 1865-1914