Institute for Race and Social Transformation

Neighborhood Narratives 
Project Lead: Dr. Charles McKinney, Associate Professor of History
Faculty Collaborators: Dr. Charity Clay, Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies; Dr. Rober Saxe, Professor of History

Faculty and students are conducting oral interviews with members of selected neighborhoods and communities from across Memphis to gather, preserve and promote living histories of individuals from diverse backgrounds. These oral narratives will play a crucial role in gaining an understanding about the lived experience of community members, while providing new insights into how personal, community-level, and city-level decisions collectively shape and structure neighborhoods and communities. The project has begun in the south Memphis neighborhood of Whitehaven. The work will culminate in an exhibit about South Memphis at the Museum of Science and History (formerly known as the Pink Palace).  

Understandings Raleigh's Literacy Landscape Through Photovoice
Project Lead: Dr. Laura Taylor, Assistant Professor of Educational Studies 

This project supports parent and family empowerment in Raleigh, a majority Black (81.3%) neighborhood in north Memphis with a population of approximately 36,000 residents. Raleigh has been identified by the Memphis Early Literacy Consortium (ELC) and Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) as a “literacy zone,” which is a group of neighborhood schools and systems that provide family supports, wraparound services, and literacy resources. Laura Taylor, Associate Professor of Educational Studies, is leading a project using photovoice to document the Raleigh community’s literacy assets as well as areas of need. Photovoice is a tool that has been used by community groups and researchers to empower members of a particular community to share their experiences and expertise by taking and collaboratively reflecting on photographs around a particular topic. Here, photovoice is being used as a way for Raleigh parents and caregivers to document how literacy exists in their lives, including how they and their families use literacy within their daily activities, the literacy resources they have access to, and their barriers to literacy learning (for themselves or their families). The information generated from this process will then be used to inform the distribution of resources and development of future programs to support literacy learning in Raleigh.

Reimagining Memphis through the Eyes of the Unhoused
Project Lead: Dr. Hadi Khoshneviss, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
Faculty Collaborator: Dr Evie Perry, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology

This project involves iRaST faculty and student fellows re-imagining Memphis from the perspective of some of our most vulnerable citizens, Memphians who endure housing insecurity. Memphis has a large population of persons who are unhoused, and the limited resources for these citizens are generally not optimally located or easily accessible. Researchers are studying how the unhoused perceive the design, distribution, and location of resources in Memphis using a go-along ethnography that combines informal conversations and formal interviews as researchers accompany unhoused persons as they navigate the city on their daily routes. The interviews will inform a counter map of the city that places resources (e.g., shelter, food, health care, and public transportation) where they would be most beneficial. Our community partner for this work is The Hospitality Hub, an NGO located in downtown Memphis that works to end homelessness in Memphis by connecting individuals with the resources they need to achieve stable housing and better health outcomes. 

Historical Racial Justice Project

Project Leads: Dr. David Maxson, Assistant Professor of Media Studies & Dr. Jasper St. Bernard, Visiting Assistant Professor of History and the American South 
Faculty Collaborators: Dr. Tim Huebner, Provost and Professor of History

The lingering effects of racial injustice are evident in Memphis, and yet there are numerous stories that remain untold. Rhodes would like to continue its relationship with two local organizations that are committed to telling these stories, Zion Cemetery and the Lynching Sites Project (LSP) of Memphis. Zion Cemetery is the oldest African American cemetery in Memphis. After the Civil War in 1873, a group of Black Americans formed the Sons of Zion and purchased 16 acres outside Memphis city limits. The cemetery was active from 1876 to 1925, spanning Reconstruction, the yellow fever epidemics, World War I, and the Jim Crow era. It is estimated that 30,000 African Americans are buried there; however, many of the graves today are unmarked due to decades of neglect and natural erosion. Zion was abandoned until 1990 when it was documented by local researchers and placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Thomas Moss, William Stewart, and Calvin McDowell, the 1892 lynching victims who fueled Ida B. Wells’ anti-lynching activism, are buried there, as are other notable Black Memphians. Rhodes has a decade-long relationship with Zion, and we would like to enhance this relationship through faculty-led research projects that will amplify the history of Zion and tell the stories of Black Memphians who are buried there. The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis is a local organization that wants “the whole and accurate truth to be told about the history of Shelby County” and believes that “we can heal and grow in understanding when we face openly the history of racial violence in our community.” According to the Equal Justice Initiative, 4,400 lynchings occurred in the American South between 1870 and 1950; 36 of those took place in Shelby County, TN. In 2015, LSP began researching those victims with the goal of erecting historical markers at the lynching sites for all 36. Tim Huebner, Associate Provost and Professor of History, serves on the boards of both of these organizations and will mentor faculty and students who work on historical research projects for both Zion and LSP.

Jackson State University

Dr. Christina J. Thomas is currently a Mellon Visiting Scholar in the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University. Before earning her Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University in 2023, she was a Predoctoral Fellow for Excellence through Diversity at the University of Pennsylvania. iRaST is supporting Dr. Thomas’ work with the Freedom Information Service Library Project to preserve the collection of Civil Rights veteran Jan Hillegas and to provide archival and digitalization training to undergraduate and graduate students at Jackson State University.

Hampton University 

Dr. Scott Challener is an Assistant Professor and Chair of English and Foreign Language at Hampton University. He serves a managing editor of the Hampton Renaissance, a student-run journal of the arts. Dr. Challener’s research and teaching interests include 20th and 21st Century U.S., Latinx, and Latin American fiction and poetry; modernism in English and Spanish; hemispheric studies; decolonization and decoloniality; literary and social theory. He was a 2023 Virginia Humanities HBCU Scholars Fellow. iRaST is supporting Dr. Challener’s iRaST work on two related projects, an encyclopedia entry for Encyclopedia Virginia on the Black Arts Movement at Hampton University and his research on Black Arts era poets and writers at HBCUs in Virginia and across the South.

Veronica Holmes is a native of Memphis, TN and a senior English major and African American Studies minor at the illustrious Fisk University. She is a UNCF/Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a member of the W. E. B. Du Bois Honors Program at Fisk. During the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies (RIRS), Veronica will be conducting research on the historical significance of the Black church in Memphis and how the church can better support Black youth and Black neighborhoods today. Faculty Mentor: Dr. Charles McKinney, Associate Professor and History & Chair of Africana Studies.

Hannah Davis is a rising junior at Rhodes College from Fayetteville, AR. She is a double major in Political Science and Educational Studies. Her RIRS project focuses on the correlation between race and poverty and its impact on education and youth violence in Memphis. While doing this research she plans to create a policy recommendation based on evidence and responses of what K12 students of Memphis need to thrive. Faculty Mentors: Dr. Bruce Jackson, Assistant Professor of Spanish; Dr. Laura Taylor, Associate Professor of Educational Studies

Trinity Imani Williams is a Dean’s Scholar and an Honor Roll student at Rhodes College; she is also a community organizer in Memphis. As a rising senior, she is double majoring in Health Equity and Africana Studies. As a New Orleans native, Trinity was immersed at a young age in the beauty and essence of music in community. Her RIRS project is focused on the history and significance of community organizing in Memphis and how it serves to produce social change and revolutionary thought through music and policy. Faculty Mentor: Dr. Charles Hughes, Associate Professor of Urban Studies and History.

Virginia Rostick is from Tryon, North Carolina and a senior at Rhodes College majoring in Health Equity and minoring in Africana Studies and Spanish. As part of the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies in summer 2024, she is researching transportation justice and mobility by exploring how social advocates and local organizations are utilizing policy as well as creative solutions to improve transit options for Memphis residents. Faculty Mentor: Dr. Charles McKinney, Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies