MZMF Freedom Schools in Mississippi
On August 2025, the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund (MZMF) held five consecutive virtual meetings with board members of the Mississippi John Hurt Foundation (MJHF) to prepare a grant proposal for the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). Founded by Dr. Carter G. Woodson in 1915, ASALH consists of forty-five branches and dozens of institutional member organizations across the United States. Earlier in 2025, ASALH received a Flexible Grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the operation of Freedom Schools, and ASALH called on ASALH Branches and Institutional member organizations to submit proposals to operate 10-week Freedom School programs. MZMF submitted a proposal on August 15 to establish a freedom school in Mississippi.
About a month later in mid-September 2025, we received an award letter from ASALH.
Harmony of Mission
MZMF’s mission aligns well with that of ASALH–“to promote research, preserve, interpret and disseminate information about Black life, history and culture to the local, regional, national and global community.” Resonating well with the work of MZMF, ASALH’s Freedom Schools are a response to the historic neglect and lack of incentives for teaching Black history. Education Week, for example, reported in April 2023 that only twelve states have mandates to teach a “module” on Black history [LINK]. In fact, only one or two lessons (less than ten percent of total class time) are devoted to Black history in U.S. history classrooms, according to the Center for K-12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education [LINK]. Since 2021, moreover, federal and state governments have issued executive orders and enacted legislation that exacerbate the silencing of Black history. Mississippi was the fifteenth state to pass such a bill in March 2022. Senate Bill 2113 forbids public schools in the state from forcing students to agree “that any sex, race, ethnicity, religion or national origin is inherently superior or inferior,” in essence banning historically accurate presentations of the Black sociohistorical experience. [LINK]
Shannon Evans
Freedom Schools Host and Mt. Zion Memorial Fund Vice President
Shannon Evans is the host of the Freedom Schools program in Mississippi.
Since 2021, she has served as the vice president of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund and co-principal investigator on grants from the American Historical Association, the Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Action program. She co-developed and contributed to the WebAtlas of African American Burial Grounds in Mississippi. She worked with Mary Frances Hurt Wright, of the MS John Hurt Foundation, to design and install the historical marker for the St. James Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery, which contains the grave of Mississippi John Hurt. She was instrumental in adding the historic house museum of MS John Hurt to the list of Mississippi state landmarks. She helped preserve the Glen Allan juke joint built by Alonzo Chatmon in the 1940s. She also worked tirelessly to inventory, process, and create a finding aid for a massive collection of photographs and manuscripts at the Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, MS. Shannon, moreover, won the Oakley Award from the Association for Gravestone Studies in 2023.
Shannon is also a Southern storyteller with a sharp eye for the secrets that linger in old houses and river towns. As the voice behind the podcast Tombigbee Tales, she blends folklore, history, and heart to capture the rhythm of life along Mississippi’s backroads. Her words hum with the cadence of porch talk and the quiet echo of the past — stories that remember what the South tries to forget.
A lifelong writer, Shannon’s fascination with people and place drives her newest work: two forthcoming books exploring the builders, dreamers, and complicated characters who shaped Columbus, Mississippi. She digs beneath the surface of heritage to uncover the human stories that built a town — the grit, grace, and contradictions that make Southern history so enduring and so alive. With her distinctive mix of curiosity, candor, and wit, Shannon Evans stands at the crossroads of past and present, giving voice to those who came before while asking the hard questions of today. Whether behind a microphone or a pen, she invites listeners and readers alike to pull up a chair and listen close — the South still has stories to tell.
Virtual Freedom School Registration
The MZMF Freedom School will operate intermittently from October 18, 2024, through January 10, 2025, holding sessions every Saturday from 2 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Genesis Church in Columbus, MS.
We will update the below schedule on a regular basis.
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AFRICA – CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION
Lecture delivered by Dr. Abdulrahman Ajibola – Assistant Professor of History, University of North Carolina-Charlotte
Dr. Ajibola joined the Department of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte as assistant professor in 2024.
Dr. Ajibola’s doctoral thesis examines how the age of enslaved people shaped the abolition of slavery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Nigeria. He examines the complex experiences of formerly enslaved children who were integrated into households, schools, and vocational institutions. He posits that although “the abolition of slavery was one of the primary justifications for the British conquest of West Africa, the British professed aim of ‘liberating’ (and ‘uplifting’) Africans was caught in a web of paradoxes.” His thesis concludes that “the so-called ‘liberated’ children were freed but not free.”
He has publications forthcoming in such journals as The Journal of Black Studies and Canadian Journal of African Studies, and in edited volumes, including “Enslavement and the African World: Interrogating the Past and Confronting the Present” and “Negotiating Identities in Contemporary Africa: Gender, Religion, and Ethno-cultural Identities.” He is working on revising his doctoral thesis into a publishable book manuscript.
Abdulrahman received his BA from the University of Ilorin and Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi.
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GREAT KINGDOMS OF AFRICA & ATLANTIC WORLD
Lecture delivered by Dr. Abdulrahman Ajibola, Assistant Professor of History, University of North Carolina-Charlotte
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TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE & AFRICAN CULTURAL SURVIVALS IN THE AMERICAS
Lecture delivered by Dr. Jodi Skipper, a Professor of Anthropology and Southern Studies in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.
Dr. Skipper received her B.A. in History from Grambling State University in 1998. It is there that she began to develop an interest in African diaspora archaeology, which she studied at Florida State University and the University of Texas at Austin. Through those institutions, she received a M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology, with a focus on historical archaeology. Her M.A. thesis was a historical and archaeological analysis of one plantation-owning family in Leon County, Florida, and her dissertation investigated the application of public archaeology and other methods of historic preservation at the historic St. Paul United Methodist Church community in the Arts District of Dallas, Texas. As a graduate student, she worked for several private and federal cultural resource management institutions, including the National Park Service. After completing her dissertation, Dr. Skipper accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of South Carolina Institute for Southern Studies. She joined the faculty at the University of Mississippi in 2011. In addition to teaching, she enjoys traveling to historic sites and attending food festivals.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Dr. Skipper’s research interests include African diaspora anthropology, historic sites management, historical archaeology, museum and heritage studies, and southern studies. She more specifically explores how African American pasts are represented in the present.
Dr. Skipper is an applied anthropologist, who explores the representation of African American lives through material culture. Her theoretical approach draws on contextual emphases in public history, public archaeology, and cultural representations in museum studies. She established a foundation for intersecting these fields through her dissertation work on the St. Paul United Methodist Church, an historically African American church in the Dallas, Texas arts district. Dr. Skipper examined the church community’s prospects of preserving its historic building and historical legacy through two heritage projects; one in which archaeologists excavated a shotgun house site on the church property and a public history project in which she created an interpretive history exhibition on the church.
During her time at the University of Mississippi, Dr. Skipper extended her focus by investigating how African American historic sites interact with the production of heritage in tourism spaces through two new projects, the Behind the Big House program in Marshall County, Mississippi, and the Promiseland Historic Preservation project in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana.
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Slavery in Mississippi: resistance, resilience, and cultural expression
Lecture delivered by Dr. Jodi Skipper
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African American Women after Reconstruction
Lecture delivered by Dr. Tara Y. White, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she specializes in African American women’s history and public history. She previously served as lead history faculty and former chair of the Arts & Sciences division at Wallace Community College Selma in Alabama. Her research areas include public history, Southern history, civil rights history, African American history, and women’s history. She also has professional experience in museums, historic sites and archives.
Since 1994, Dr. White has worked with a number of history museums and historic sites in various capacities. She has served on the staffs of Alabama State University, the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) and the Alabama Historical Commission, where she was the site director for the Alabama State Capitol and the Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station (now Freedom Rides Museum).
Dr. White is active in numerous professional associations. She has served as a panelist at numerous conferences and as a consultant, lecturer, and guest speaker for a variety of history organizations, museums, and universities.
Dr. White earned a Ph.D. in public history from Middle Tennessee State University, a Master of Arts degree from the Cooperstown Graduate Program at SUNY-Oneonta and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
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RECONSTRUCTION IN MISSISSIPPI
Dr. Brian Mitchell Lecture by Dr. Brian Mitchell, a noted scholar of “Difficult History” and is currently a research professor at the University of Illinois -Springfield. Mitchell taught African American and Public History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for fifteen years before relocating to Springfield, Illinois. The author of several books, book chapters, and papers. Mitchell’s most recent book, Monumental: Oscar Dunn and his radical fight in Reconstruction Louisiana, was the winner of several prestigious book awards, including the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, the American Association of State and Local History’s (AASLH) Excellence Award, and was a finalist for the Organization of American Historians’ Best Civil War and Reconstruction Book Award.
IN-PERSON ATTENDEES WILL RECEIVE A FREE COPY OF DR. MITCHELL’S AWARD WINNING GRAPHIC HISTORY!
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THE JIM CROW ERA & GREAT MIGRATION
Dr. Ronald Goodwin is a well-published historian who serves as the interim chair of the Social Sciences Division at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU). For more information about Dr. Goodwin’s research, teaching, and service, please visit the PVAMU website…
Education
- PhD, MA, MS, Texas Southern University
- BA, Texas Lutheran University
Research
- “I Too Sing Texas Our Texas: Black Texans and New Deal Community Service Projects.” In Conflict and Cooperation: Reflections on the New Deal in Texas edited by Milton Jordan and George Cooper (Nacogdoches: Stephen F. Austin Press), 2019
- “Time to Go: Reasons Why the White Middle Class Abandoned Houston” Journal of South Texas 32 (Fall 2018): 52-64
- The Mask of Microaggressions: Case studies of Racism in the US, Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co. (co-authored with Dr. Mark Tschaepe), 2017
- “Sweatting Civil Rights,” Texas Insights vol.VII, no.5 (May 2017)
- “Subprime Lending: The Mirage of Homeownership” Global Journal of Multidisciplinary Research vol.1, no.1 (November 2016)
- Remembering the Days of Sorrow: The WPA and the Texas Slave Narratives. Abilene: State House/McWhiney Foundation Press, 2014
- “Black Paradox in the Age of Terrorism: Military Patriotism or Higher Education?” in Texas and War: New Interpretations on the Military History of the Lone Star State, edited by Dr. Charles Grear and Dr. Alexander Mendoza. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2012
- “Into Freedom’s Abyss: Reflections of Reconstruction Violence in Texas” in Still the Arena of Civil War: Violence and Turmoil in Reconstruction Texas, 1865-1874, edited by Dr. Kenneth W. Howell. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2012
- “On the Edge of First Freedoms: Black Texans and the Civil War” in The Seventh Star of the Confederacy, edited by Kenneth W. Howell, 268-286 Denton: University of North Texas Press (co-authored with Dr. Bruce Glasrud), 2009
- “Control After Dark: Slave Owners and Their Control of Slaves’ Intimate Relationships or Who’s Your Daddy?” Journal of History and Culture 1 (2008): 18-29
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The Civil Rights Movement
Lecture delivered by Dr. Tara Y. White, an Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she specializes in African American women’s history and public history. She previously served as lead history faculty and former chair of the Arts & Sciences division at Wallace Community College Selma in Alabama. Her research areas include public history, Southern history, civil rights history, African American history, and women’s history. She also has professional experience in museums, historic sites and archives.
Since 1994, Dr. White has worked with a number of history museums and historic sites in various capacities. She has served on the staffs of Alabama State University, the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) and the Alabama Historical Commission, where she was the site director for the Alabama State Capitol and the Montgomery Greyhound Bus Station (now Freedom Rides Museum).
Dr. White is active in numerous professional associations. She has served as a panelist at numerous conferences and as a consultant, lecturer, and guest speaker for a variety of history organizations, museums, and universities.
Dr. White earned a Ph.D. in public history from Middle Tennessee State University, a Master of Arts degree from the Cooperstown Graduate Program at SUNY-Oneonta and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
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Black Power, Black Lives Matter, and the Struggle of Self-Determination
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AFRICAN AMERICAN CEMETERY PRESERVATION WORKSHOP IN MEMPHIS, TN
Dr. T. DeWayne Moore – Assistant Professor of History at Prairie View A&M University & Executive Director of the Mt. Zion Memorial Fund
Margaret Hangan – Former US Forest Service Archaeologist
Dr. Augusta Palmer, filmmaker and director of The Blues Society
Registration for MZMF’s Freedom School is mandatory for virtual attendees. To sign up, please visit the registration link below.
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