One LSU Shreveport educator is working to attune middle and high school teachers and their students to Shreveport’s rich history.
Dr. Chantee Earl earned a grant from the Library of Congress to demonstrate how teachers can use primary sources to bring topics alive for their students.
Earl is organizing a teacher field trip of sorts in which 40 educators will tour various historic Shreveport sites related to the city’s role in the Civil Rights Movement.
The free professional development opportunity is called “From Landmarks to Lyrics: Teaching Civil Rights History Through Primary Sources, Music, and Place-Based Learning.”
Teachers can participate in excursions on Sept. 19 or Sept. 26 (8:30 am to 4:30 p.m.) to visit these sites and to explore ways in which educators across all subject areas can incorporate tangible historic examples, documents and music in their lessons.
Interested educators can register for the event through a registration form. Participants will receive a $75 stipend and educational resources, including two books about the power of primary sources and placed-based learning.
Educators in all content areas are invited to register ahead of the Sept. 12 deadline for the program, which is sponsored by the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Southern Region at Middle Tennessee State University.
“We’re looking at primary sources and historical landmarks, training teachers how to use local history to connect to the larger historical narrative,” said Earl, who is the chair of the education department at LSUS. “And I really wanted to incorporate not only local landmarks but also Northwest Louisiana’s great musical culture.
“We’re going to talk about people like Sam Cooke but also about local artists like Ledbetter and the community (Ledbetter Heights) named for him. By understanding this history, how do we bring about change and uplift?”
Cooke wrote his famous song “A Change is Gonna Come,” partially inspired by his experience in Shreveport in 1963.
He and his wife were denied a room at Holiday Inn North on North Market before his performance at the Municipal Auditorium. He was arrested later at the black-owned Castle Hotel for disturbing the peace.
Earl led a one-week summer camp this summer using Cooke as the tangible example to explore segregation and the Civil Rights Movement.
“If you couldn’t go to any other hotel because of segregation, the Castle Hotel is where you went,” Earl said. “We weren’t able to go and see these sites firsthand, but a couple of kids did get the chance to go with their parents.
“Then we created our own hotels from the 1950s and 1960s in the Collaboratory at LSUS. What would their hotel look like, and who could come? We began to talk about inclusivity, why weren’t more people pushing for it and why the voices of the ones that were weren’t louder than the noise. It gives an opportunity for deeper learning, which is more than just knowing the standard and passing the test. It’s about the student as a human and how they move and interact in the world.”
Sprinkling in the use of primary sources where educational curriculum allows can be a powerful tool, Earl said.
“I showed the kids a map of Shreveport and where these things happened, and kids recognized streets, connecting them to the content in ways that are meaningful,” said Earl, who spent seven years teaching in K-12 classrooms in addition to her extensive experience at the college level and with similar programs. “Primary sources are so important because students build skills from studying them.
“They are asking themselves, ‘What do I see, what do I think, what am I interpreting? It engages critical inquiry skills that a lecture might not engage, and it invokes a picture in their minds and an emotion. We know that understanding place and location allows you to think about what you’re learning differently.”
Building an enduring curriculum
While teaching at Georgia State in Atlanta, Earl put together an immersive program using Atlanta’s broad impact in the Civil Rights Movement as well as nearby regional locales like Montgomery, Ala., Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C.
Earl led educational tours of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Park, which houses the King Center on Auburn Ave. in Atlanta
That street thrived in the 1940s and 1950s with scores of African-American owned businesses, one of the most successful African-American economic zones in the country’s history.
King has a history in Shreveport, too, visiting the city twice in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, including his 1958 “Speech at Galilee,” thought to be the first of his speeches that was recorded. The speech was given at the Old Galilee Baptist Church, built by formerly enslaved people in 1877 at the southern edge of present-day downtown Shreveport.
The educational experiences became much more than just walking tours as Earl steeped local educators and students in the significance of place-based learning, eventually connecting the program with long-time residents of Atlanta’s West End neighborhoods who experienced the Civil Rights Movement personally.
She hopes to do the same in Shreveport with future grants and resources, connecting educators and their students to community history.
“Looking at actual documents and places, students can learn from what people in the past did – how they maneuvered and navigated because they’re reading their thoughts from something like memos they wrote,” Earl said. “Students can follow their frames of mind and critically inquire.
“Students develop critical literacy skills because they’re able to look at multiple things, not just media, but physical documents. It’s not just basic content anymore – it’s looking deeper.”