CBL 100 - Introduction to CBL: Unheard Voices of Black Lexington and Rockbridge County

Experiential Learning (EXP): Yes
Credits: 3

In this course, students learn the basics of community-engaged learning through working on projects that focus on the history and present-day trajectory of Black Lexington and Rockbridge County. We discuss why community-based learning is a high-impact and civic-minded practice. Students acquire the needed dispositions, new ways of thinking, and skills necessary to succeed in a real-world collaboration with community stakeholders who have diverse backgrounds and stories. Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach, we read secondary and primary sources that provide insights into what it was like for Black families to live here during Jim Crow, as well as the changes brought on by desegregation. We invite speakers from the community to provide their own individual perspectives. The final project is a series of digital stories about local places of Black entrepreneurship, leisure, and community organization delivered to the Rockbridge Historical Society. the Regional Tourism Board, the Visitor Center of Lexington for an ongoing exhibit. Other community partners could also include First Baptist Church, Randolph Street Methodist Church, Young Rockbridge Advocates, and the Rockbridge NAACP through the guest-speaker series. Goluboff.