Lisa Buchanan co-presents on the 1898 Wilmington Massacre

Buchanan co-presented an interdisciplinary session that explores teaching racial violence in grades 4-12 using primary and secondary sources about the Wilmington Race Massacre and grounded in Muhammad’s historically responsive literacy and King’s Black historical consciousness framework at the SOURCES Conference on Jan. 21.

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Lisa Buchanan, Elon University

Lisa Buchanan, associate professor in the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education, and Cara Ward, assistant professor in the Watson College of Education at UNC Wilmington, co-presented their more recent collaborative scholarship, “Unpacking Racial Violence and Place: Using Sources to Examine The Wilmington Race Massacre” at the 2023 SOURCES Conference in Orlando, Florida on Jan. 21.

The interdisciplinary inquiry project is a collaboration with UNC Wilmington secondary education faculty, professor Donyell Roseboro and associate professor Denise Ousley, and is part of a larger collection of ongoing scholarship about the 1898 massacre by Ward and Buchanan.

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Cara Ward, UNC Wilmington

The interdisciplinary place-based project presented in their session provides a framework for teachers in grades 4-12 to explore the teaching of 1898 in grades 4-12. The project begins with framing student inquiry about 1898 in Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s historically responsive literacy framework and Dr. LaGarrett King’s Black historical consciousness framework. The project then supports teachers in intentional work with locating and using primary and secondary sources about the Wilmington Race Massacre, as well as incorporating historical sites like cemeteries into classroom inquiry. Buchanan and Ward also used a teacher workshop model during the session where participants used the project to begin thinking about and planning for historical inquiries that could be done in their place.

The annual SOURCES Conference is hosted by the University of Central Florida and funded through the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Grant program.