Race & Place Workshop

 

 

  • Workshop dates:
    July 13-18 and
    August 3-8, 2008

  • All applicants have been notified of their status. Thank you to all those who applied for the Summer 2008 workshops.

  • For more information
    please send us an email

 

"This workshop experience was phenomenal, to say the least. I've never been so stretched professionally in my life! I have made some determinations regarding my teaching practices next year that are a direct result of what I've witnessed and experience at Race and Place. I am grateful to the Decatur House staff as well as the NEH."

- 2007 Race and Place Participant

 

 

Thank you for your interest in Race and Place: African Americans in Washington, DC from 1800-1954, a National Endowment for the Humanities Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop for School Teachers. The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Stephen Decatur House Museum consider it a privilege to offer this unique and exciting professional development opportunity to educators from across the country.

We will hold two six-day workshops, July 13-18 and August 3-8, 2008, which will be based at the Stephen Decatur House Museum, located one block from the White House on historic Lafayette Square. I am confident that the six days workshop participants spend in our nation’s capital will be both intellectually challenging and a great deal of fun.

Decatur House will be a fantastic base of operations for the workshop, not only because of its historical significance, but also because participants will be able to interact with, on a daily basis, a vibrant neighborhood unlike any other in the country. Workshop participants may spot celebrities from journalism or politics having lunch in nearby restaurants, observe the daily protests in front of the White House, or walk around the corner to explore the Renwick Gallery's amazing collection of American crafts. Centrally located in downtown Washington, Decatur House is also a short subway ride from the Mall, the Capitol, and most museums.

Support from the National Endowment for the Humanities will provide participant stipends and a partial travel reimbursement to assist with both travel and lodging costs. Further information about these funds is provided on the housing page. Additionally, please utilize the entire website to review carefully the content, requirements, logistics, and financial policies of the workshops.

I can think of no better place to explore the relationship between race and place in American history than Washington, DC.

Certainly, crucial questions of slavery, emancipation, segregation and desegregation have resonated deeply as sectional issues, inexorably linking race and place in our history. As the seat of the federal government, Washington, DC occupies a unique position within our national consciousness and offers a unique perspective from which to examine this relationship.

The significance and impact of events that have occurred in the District of Columbia are rarely confined to the city alone. In the swath of American history from legal enslavement to legal desegregation, significant changes in status and civil rights often came to African Americans in Washington, DC before they came to African Americans in the rest of the country. Moreover, the city has always been home to people who were both groundbreaking in their actions and representative of larger trends.

Indeed, to study at an area’s history from the point of view of a particular racial group is to gain a deeper understanding of both the place and the group, and this is certainly true of African-American experiences in the nation’s capital. To this end, the Race and Place workshops will promote thoughtful investigations of four crucial periods in American history—Slavery, Emancipation, Reconstruction and Segregation — through the lens of the experiences of African Americans in the District of Columbia.

The goal of the Race and Place workshops is to create a collaborative learning community in which educators explore the relationship between race and place through visits to landmarks with both local and national significance, discover connections between events in different historical periods, gain new perspectives and resources for the important task of teaching American history, and freely exchange ideas and best practices.

Race and Place will explore the following topics through visits to historic landmarks, lectures by established and emerging scholars, pedagogical resource sessions, and collaborative curriculum project development:

 

• The Landscape of Urban Enslavement
• Resistance to Slavery in the Nation’s Capital
• Emancipation and Civil War Washington
• Institutions of Reconstruction: The Freedman’s Bureau and the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company
• Frederick Douglass and the Politics of Reconstruction
• Community, Activism, and Desegregation: 1900-1954

Again, thank you for your interest in the Race and Place workshop. I am so excited about the wonderful experiences that educators, faculty, and workshop staff are going to have this summer. I anticipate lively and frank conversations, inspiring new ideas, and the development of lasting friendships. Furthermore, we hope that Decatur House and the National Trust will become resources that you can draw upon during the workshop and long afterwards. I look forward to our accomplishments during the time in Washington and to the resulting collaborations that will carry the workshops’ impact well into the future.

Sincerely,

Katherine Malone-France
Race and Place Project Director