Mississippi Delta Community Memory Project
From February 17-26, 2006 eight students in the course “Social Change in American Communities” from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts visited the Mississippi Delta to learn about local history and heritage, with a particular emphasis on African-American history and memory in the region. Led by Professors Mark Auslander and David Cunningham, and teaching assistant, Rachel Kulick, the class learned about the history of the civil rights movement, the Blues, and other aspects of the Delta’s heritage. We were especially interested in people’s stories of places that matter deeply to them, and in how memories of those places are passed on through time.
We explored new technologies that helped us record and share some of the important stories and memories of Delta communities. We learned how to “podcast,” broadcasting recorded sound over the internet so that visitors to our site can download recordings for free into ipods or other audio devices. We are in the process of developing audio walking tours of some neighborhoods in the Delta, so that local people and visitors can, in time, walk through these neighborhood while hearing the voices and memories of people who have known these communities for a long time.