News from the Center
As the fall 2006 semester kicks into high gear, Center faculty and student are pursuing several new initiatives while continuing to expand some of our on-going projects.
Our Regional Music Project, funded in part by the Georgia Folklife Program, continues to grow with the release of our third CD--Set Your Fields on Fire 1--in February 2006. The CD features over seventy minutes of both historic and new field and studio recordings representing white and African American musicians and singers from the West Georgia area. Our public concert and CD release party proved to be very successful. We are completing work on a second volume of that CD to be released later this year. With a new grant from the Georgia Folklife Program, the Center will sponsor our fifth public concert for the Regional Music Project in March 2006 and will organize programs on regional music for 8th grade students in the region's middle schools. In addition, graduate students Heather Thayer and Bethany Campbell will archive our research and fieldwork from the past two years to make it more accessible to researchers. We plan to update our website as well, so stay tuned!
All of our three regional music CDs, including "I Hear A Sweet Voice Calling," featuring the music of Alton Stitcher, and our award-winning Everybody's Tuned to the Radio: Rural Music Traditions in West Georgia, 1947-1979. Both CDs are available from the Center and from Horton's Books and Burson's Feed and Seed, on Adamson Square in Carrollton.
One of our new initiatives is to document the textile mill history of the West Georgia region. With funding from the Warren and Ava Sewell Foundation and a public program grant from the Georgia Humanities Council, the Center is researching the landscape of textile mills and apparel companies that operated in Carroll County in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, conducting interviews with former mill employees, and seeking mill documents that could be archived for future researchers. If you have information on textile mill history that you could share with us, please contact Dr. Ann McCleary or Melissa Buchanan at the Center. We are currently creating an exhibit that will travel to be local libraries in Carrollton, Villa Rica, Bowdon, and Bremen, and we will be organizing several public programs at each venue.
The Center for Public History is now a research and collecting partner with the "Veterans History Project" organized by the Library of Congress. Amanda Corman, our graduate research assistant, is seeking individuals who would be interested in conducting or participating in oral history interviews. Amanda has completed a teaching trunk related to World War II history and is planning one on the Vietnam War. If you are interested in being a part of this exciting new project and borrowing this traveling trunk, contact Amanda Corman at the Center.
Our exhibit, "Biscuits, Cornbread, and Teacakes: Baking Traditions in the West Georgia Piedmont" is currently available for use throughout our region. This nine-panel exhibit explores the tradition of baking, biscuits, cornbread, teacakes, and specialty baked good and ends by examining how baking traditions have changed in the present day. So far, it has been featured at the Carrollton Junior High and Jonesville Middle School media centers, the Neva Lomason Library in Carrollton, the Coweta-East Newnan Public Library, the Carrollton Senior Center, the Carroll EMC offices, the Villa Rica Senior Center, and the Warren Sewell Library in Bremen, among other sites. For more information on the exhibit or to schedule it for your institution, please contact Ann McCleary. The Center also offers educational programs to all age groups on southern baking traditions. The exhibit and programs are funded by a grant from the Georgia Humanities Council.
The Center is also embarking on a publication related to the southern baking exhibit. Right now, we are seeking your favorite family recipes and stories to accompany them. If you are interested in participating in this project, please contact Sandy Pollard, Sarah Middlemast, or Ann McCleary at 678-839-6141.
One of our most exciting new projects is a study of an African American neighborhood in Powder Springs, Georgia. During the summer of 2006, a group of graduate and undergraduate students began collecting oral histories or community residents and documenting the neighborhood through historical research. In the fall of 2006, we will be preparing a twelve-panel exhibit on the neighborhood's history, to be displayed around the City as well as the Seven Springs Museum in Powder Springs. In the spring of 2007, the project team will be preparing a 48-page publication that documents its history through oral histories, photographs, and other historical records. For more information on this project, contact project directors Catherine Hendricks or Ann McCleary.
The Center reaches out to schools in the region through several projects. We offer a "Teaching Community History" teachers packet to those who would like to incorporate activities on community history into the classroom. For the sixth year in a row, we will be working with Carrollton Junior High's oral history project in the spring of 2004. In january of 2004, the Center will offer our new exhibit on southern baking to travel into schools in our region. . Interested teachers should contact Dr. Ann McCleary for more details.
As the Center enters its seventh year of operation, we have begun to better organize our own administrative records. Amanda Corman and Sheila Milton are helping us with our archiving process this fall semester.
We appreciate the opportunity to work with the residents of our community and our region. We invite the public to come visit the Center and utilize our archives or to contact us to help you in your community history projects.
Ann McCleary, Director
September 2006