As part of a nearly 50-year-old partnership with Tougaloo College, Brown students will travel to the school in Tougaloo, Miss. this spring break to explore the civil rights movement. Francoise Hamlin, assistant professor of Africana studies, and Maitrayee Bhattacharyya '91, associate dean for diversity programs, will lead the trip. They will choose approximately four students through an application that was due yesterday.
"Mississippi and its history (have) a lot to teach students in the northeast about the nation — through its contrast and similarities," Hamlin wrote in an email to The Herald. By bringing students to Mississippi "to breathe the air, visit sites of the mass movement and sites of murder, a better understanding of this national history can be grasped."
The students who participate will "benefit enormously" from the trip, Hamlin added.
The University formed its partnership with Tougaloo, a liberal arts and historically black college, in 1964, instituting collaborative research and exchange programs, according to the Brown University-Tougaloo College Partnership website. The partnership includes a teaching program, through which Brown graduate students act as faculty at Tougaloo, and a semester exchange program for undergraduate students from both schools.
Hamlin said she hopes the trip will be a way to "re-strengthen" ties between the two schools and will generate interest in the semester exchange. "It's an educational and research trip as much as it is a trip to expand social and cultural connections," she wrote.
While the application was open to all undergraduate students, the majority of students who applied are enrolled in Hamlin's AFRI 1090: "Black Freedom Struggle Since 1945," she wrote. One graduate student in Hamlin's HIST 2790: "Rethinking the Civil Rights Movement" will also participate.
The students in Hamlin's courses who are selected to participate in the trip will have background knowledge of the civil rights movement in Mississippi. In preparation for the trip, they will read two additional books and participate in a seminar with Hamlin. Once they arrive in Mississippi, the students will do some archival work, Hamlin wrote.
