Two major New York state universities are collaborating with a teacher-run organization seeking to teach communities and students about civil resistance in local history, creating an online platform to display the organization’s curricula and local resistance efforts.
Kesha James
Now going into its third year of operations, the Antiracist Curriculum Project (ACP) has been working diligently to develop social studies curriculum that teaches students about the systemic injustices and historical resistance that took place in their part of the state.
And scholars and students from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and the University of Rochester (UR) have worked to map out some of these instances of resistance and collective action in Monroe County and the immediate Rochester area, said Dr. Whitney Sperrazza, an assistant professor of English and humanities, computing, and design and one of RIT’s leaders for this Resistance Mapping project.
Mapping out Black resistance
The map is displayed on a website that the schools helped ACP create, which also contains links to ACP’s various content. ACP retains full control over the curriculum documents and can update them whenever, Sperrazza said.
Audiences opening the map up are greeted with the following message: “Rochester community members have a long history of resisting injustices and inequities. Individual activists, mutual aid groups, and large community organizations have fought national and local policies that overwhelmingly affect people of color. … These stories are part of Monroe County’s past and present - and these stories will continue to be part of its future.”
The map pins the locations of various injustices and resistance efforts, from sites of segregation and protests to Jesse Steven's Grocery store, one of the first Black-owned grocery stores in the city, and the Pythodd Club, a jazz club that was described as “a site of Black Joy as resistance in the face of the redlining and disinvestment in the club's neighborhood.”
