Please join us on Friday, September 13th, at 3 p.m. in the Alumni Lounge for our first Faculty Colloquium of this semester.
Presenter: Maegan Parker Brooks, Assistant Professor of Civic Communication and Media
Title: The Making of Find Your Voice: The Online Resource for Fannie Lou Hamer Studies (findyourvoice.willamette.edu)*
Abstract: On August 22, 2019, the 55th Anniversary of Fannie Lou Hamer’s historic testimony before the credentials committee at the Democratic National Convention, Civic Communication and Media professors Maegan Parker Brooks and Pablo Correa launched Find Your Voice: The Online Resource for Fannie Lou Hamer Studies. The Find Your Voice website is the culmination of nearly 15 years of research that Brooks conducted in partnership with the Hamer family, activists, scholars, artists, and public school teachers in the Mississippi Delta. 
The Find Your Voice website provides free access to: (1) an original BrainPOP cartoon about Fannie Lou Hamer, (2) a K-12 civil rights curriculum, featuring 32 lesson plans spanning 18 curricular units, (3) an original children’s book, Planting Seeds: The Life and Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer, written by Brooks and illustrated by Shelby McConville, a local kindergarten teacher, (4) an annotated driving tour of Hamer-related sites in the Mississippi Delta, created by Correa and Davis W. Houck of Florida State University, (5) access to the award-winning short film, “Find Your Voice,” written, produced, and directed by high school students in the Delta, who enrolled in the inaugural Sunflower County Film Academy workshop taught by Correa and Joy Davenport, and (6) a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the forthcoming feature film, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America, which will debut during Willamette’s 2020 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration.
During her colloquium presentation, Brooks will feature several of these resources, share more about the process of creating the project, and preview a Senior Experience course she is designing wherein Willamette students will contribute to future phases of the Find Your Voice website.
*The website was made possible by support from Brian Hoyt and Willamette’s Web Development team.
**The larger Find Your Voice project was made possible by the support of generous private donors and public grants, including the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area Partnerships, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and more.
Students are welcome and coffee and treats will be provided. We look forward to seeing you there.
Bill Kelm and Stephen Patterson
Faculty Colloquium Coordinators