I have always been fascinated with the relationship religion had with the civil rights movement. Some significant leaders of the movement were apart of religious groups as pastors. I want to understand why this occurred so frequently within the civil rights movement. But, I also want to pull back the metaphoric curtain and look at religious figures involved in the civil rights movement that does not get the attention as other figures do. Public Humanities (PH) and Public Religious Studies (PRS) give the public a broader view of the civil rights movement and those involved with it.
PH
The Root, which is focused on “Black News, Opinions, Politics and Culture,” has articles dedicated to the civil rights movement but also starting to peak conversations about lesser-known figures. There is only a blurb about each person, but I think this is a good starting point to get someone’s interested and have them start doing research. Blogs like Religion In American History and OUPblog, are great because they offer a place for scholars to interact with the broader public. They offer the scholars opinion on religion and the civil rights movement giving a reader another point of view.
I think a great tool for mapping out the civil rights movement for the public to get an idea of how it developed would be to use the Civil Rights Trail interactive map. The map gives the user easy to understand where major civil rights events happened but also lesser-known events. The map is straightforward to use, and if the user clicks on an area, it will take them to another page in which it tells the user about the event.
PRS
Religious studies scholars often use blogs and twitter to reach the public in a way that is great success. Scholars like Carolyn Dupont is an Associate professor at Eastern Kentucky University and has written about religion and the civil rights movement on the OUPblog before. Twitter is a great resource for peaking interests I think. This is because you can find scholars talking about their research interests and sharing articles they find interesting or important. For my research interests in particular twitter was a great resource when I was writing my senior thesis. I say this because I started writing during black history month and many scholars were tweeting out articles about lesser-known members of the civil rights movement.
PH and PRS break down the barrier between the public and academia which is a major point in my rationale for public scholarship. This is how we bring more people into academia or just get people more informed about important events.