Virtual Grants GRANTS TUBE SCHOLAR Virtual Road Scholars series opens new doors of opportunity Pen Strokes of Justice Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys, Cooking in Cotton Country
Rebekah Davis (left) and Peggy Towns (right) present Pen Strokes of Justice. Davis is archivist for Limestone County Archives, and Towns is author of Scottsboro Unmasked: The Decatur Story.
For years, Road Scholars crisscrossed Alabama to enlighten, engage and inspire audiences across many miles. But when the COVID-19 pandemic closed doors around the state and shut down humanities-based organizations, Alabama Humanities Foundation found a way around the challenges of the pandemic, traveling those same miles to deliver humanities programs via the internet. Facebook Live and Zoom video conferencing became the tools of the day, and organizers soon discovered that there were positives in a time of crisis. First up was Road Scholar Rebekah Davis, archivist at Limestone County Archives, whose own doors had been closed due to the pandemic. She and others had received a message from Programs Director Melanie Bouyer, pointing out that they had presentations at the ready and asked if they could adapt them to digital delivery. “We jumped on a Zoom call,” Davis said, “and we discussed what it would look like and how it would work. It was all new for everybody. You couldn’t
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really do it the wrong way. It had not been done before. There were no expectations to live up to.” She saw it as a way to deliver programming in a new manner – “reaching people where they are. You start with what you have and transfer it to a different technology.” She and author Peggy Towns had done in-person presentations on Judge Horton, the judge in the Scottsboro Boys case who granted a new trial to one of the defendants amid threats from violent opposition.
Mosaic | Fall 2020 | alabamahumanities.org
Davis also presented Sisters in Suffrage.
