Civil Rights Road Trip Project

Civil Rights Road Trip Project Hero Image

The Civil Rights Road Trip Project is grounded in a desire to find a home for an existing collection of invaluable South Carolina civil rights history resources that will:

  • allow these resources to realize their highest and best purpose;
  • honor the purpose, effort and commitment of those who created and preserved these resources; and
  • leverage these resources to best advantage for the benefit of South Carolina 8th graders and their teachers.

The four resources share a depth and passion for the South Carolina civil rights story, but thus far have been isolated from one another to a challenging degree:

  • ColumbiaSC63 is a South Carolina non-profit that has brought together the Columbia, South Carolina civil rights story in a fresh and relevant way, largely through the use of still photographs, text, and signed stations along Main Street in Columbia placed at the site of key events in that story.
  • Dr. Bobby Donaldson, a professor of African American studies and civil rights history at the University of South Carolina, has, as part of his research work, drawn together a large store of raw, unedited South Carolina civil rights film footage and photographs.
  • South Carolina Educational Television has created, edited and produced a large cache of interviews with South Carolina civil rights leaders and heroes, conducted by South Carolina public school students.
  • The South Carolina Department of Education has created an award winning set of standards for the teaching of civil rights history.

The Civil Rights Road Trip Project intends to oversee and fund the effort to bring these disparate resources together and leverage them into a life greater than the whole. Using yet another existing SCETV produced resource, Road Trip! Through SC Civil Rights History, an on-line program currently found on www.knowitall.org , the Project will:

  • Create a remodeled, interactive, on-line and mobile application civil rights history resource for South Carolina’s 8th grade students and their teachers.
  • Incorporate into the new resource all the text, still photographs, raw film footage, and student interviews described above and make them available in a fun and easy hypertext format, utilizing an on-line map of South Carolina.
  • Provide advance promotion and training for 8th grade teachers, in accordance with the standards developed by the South Carolina Department of Education.
  • Fund this work through currently scheduled, Corporation for Public Broadcasting funded, production work ongoing at South Carolina Educational Television and so leverage dramatic savings in the cost of creating the new on-line and mobile app resource.

Meet the Fellows from this class.