In the 1950s, New Haven was called the “Model City” city because of an expansive federally-sponsored urban renewal project that promised revitalization to commercial and residential districts throughout the city. That reputation
lingers among residents even if the promise was not completely fulfilled. A social action pilot program launched on November 1st has once again poised New Haven to become a model city to the nation. The project is an impressive experiment in democratic action that asks a fundamental question: in the words Stephanie Robinson, president and founder of The Jamestown Project at Yale that sponsors the project, “Does learning about history increase people’s sense of agency?” The participants in the pilot program will examine how literary, historical and religious texts may affect a community’s understanding of democracy, the Black community, and social activism. When completed, the pilot could invigorate activism in the Elm City and, if duplicated, ignite a movement of Black democratic activism across America.During the 15-week informal course of study, participants will consider classic works such as the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folks, and Ida B. Wells’ landmark account on lynching, A Red Record, said Charisse Carney-Nunes, Jamestown Project senior vice president. At the end of the course, they should be able to think about how they can take responsibility, individually and collectively, to improve democracy for all citizens.
Ultimately, the aim of the pilot program is to produce the “Covenant Curriculum Manual,” a kind of companion to The Covenant with Black America edited by Tavis Smiley and published earlier this year. The manual will be a guide to how central texts and images drawn from Black history, sociology, political science and philosophy can influence Black democratic activism today.
Through a partnership with Smiley, Stephanie Robinson says, “We are taking the huge excitement [around the Covenant] to try to shape that and catapult more people into social action in their community.” Robinson said Jamestown’s Covenant curriculum project is “cultural and historical enrichment in a social action context.” People will be enriched and be able to take the information to accomplish what they want to do in the community she said.
Princeton University luminaries Cornell West and Eddie Glaude developed “The Covenant Curriculum: A Study of Black Democratic Action” as a complement to the Covenant. In introducing the curriculum, the professors write, “the struggle for Black freedom continues to be the highest form of democratic action in American history.” The purpose of the curriculum they say is to “introduce the student to the complex array of Black democratic practices from slavery to our contemporary moment.” The Covenant curriculum was unveiled during the annual State of the Black Union forum produced by Tavis Smiley last February.
The Covenant curriculum outlines weekly reading assignments and multimedia content, such as “Birth of a Nation.” Punctuating the assignments are suggested activities including creating a timeline of Black presence in America and evaluating major hip-hop artists in light of the principles of Black democratic action studied during the course. Yale Law School professor, Ron Sullivan, a founding member and Senior Fellow of Jamestown, worked with other Covenant collaborators and Jamestown fellows to expand the curriculum since it was introduced last February. Summaries were added to the list of texts and images to be studied during the pilot project this fall.
“Some people may ask, “Why read The Souls of Black Folks? What does that have to do with problems like gun violence?’” Carney-Nunes said. These questions are valid given the significant social issues of poverty, public education, affordable housing, crime and gun violence that destabilize segments of the Black community in New Haven. Carney-Nunes said Jamestown fellows are certainly aware of entrenched social problems in New Haven and other urban areas around the country. However, the Covenant curriculum is not attempting to develop a one-stop solution. “Those are going to be legitimate questions the community will have to answer,” she said. “We are not telling the community what they should do. The solutions are going to have to be local, from the ground up.” She said the Jamestown Project wants to determine “if you know about historical democratic action forty years ago, does it make you more likely to participate in civic activism?”
Ron Sullivan, and Rev. Samuel Ross-Lee of Immanuel Baptist Church, also a founding member and Jamestown Senior Fellow, will facilitate most of the discussions. Participants, who include Curlena McDonald, president of Granville Academy and executive director of the Dwight community management team, Brian Perkins of Southern Connecticut State University, Karen Dubois-Walton, the New Haven mayor’s chief of staff, Elizabeth Alexander, poet and Yale English professor and Kia Levy of the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, were chosen for their leadership in education, public service, and community organization. The pilot will be hosted at Immanuel Baptist Church on Chapel Street in New Haven.
The ten essays in the Covenant are based topics such as health, education, community policing, economics and technology. A frequent observation of the Covenant is that it neglects a focus on building a strong family. Carney-Nunes said that the Jamestown Project has taken on the task of contributing an eleventh essay on the family that will be added to future printings of the Covenant. “We use the Covenant as a foundational text and its ten principles as guideposts” to determine topics and discussion points said Carney-Nunes. The Covenant curriculum, however, is the central text of Jamestown’s social action project in New Haven she said.
New England may be an unlikely location to pursue the mission of an organization called The Jamestown Project, which takes its name from Jamestown, Virginia. Another distinction is that in the annals of history, Jamestown and New Haven are like bookends in the historic progression of Black liberation in America. Jamestown is recognized as the first location where European captors brought Africans four hundred year ago, setting in motion the prolonged system of enslavement in America. New Haven was the scene of significant episodes in the Amistad incident in 1839, in which the celebrated African leader Cinque and his compatriots eventually won their freedom from Spanish captors, with the help of sympathetic New Englanders. The Jamestown Project fellows will introduce the completed Covenant Curriculum Manual in
Jamestown in February 2007, the year that Jamestown observes its four-hundred year anniversary. The presentation of the Covenant Curriculum manual designed to increase democratic action for all citizens will be a signal moment of recovery at the locale where such a ruthless injustice as American slavery had its origin.
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