By: Trey Curry
On Monday, July 8th, I had the chance to attend Kyle Jones’ Historical Analysis class. The very first thing I noticed was the type of comfortable and open environment Kyle and his scholars shared, even only being two weeks in. Kyle has done a very good job in creating this environment that isn’t just restricted to historical talk. They had an enjoyable conversation about Family Day, which was July 7th, and it really brought a personal feel to the class.
Now, on to the historical talk. On this particular day, Kyle was showing a documentary on the civil rights movement, and after about every 10-15 minutes, he would ask open-ended questions about what the scholars just watched, and they had very impressive discussions over the topics. One important topic they talked about was the stereotype of whites “saving” blacks during the civil rights movement. As said in the documentary, blacks knew the rights they deserved, they just had to work to get whites to realize the same, so whites didn’t “save” blacks, and the class agreed on that opinion.
During the second week, Mitch McConnell came in and spoke to all the historical analysis scholars. A couple of the scholars, Jack Reynolds and Veronica Lam, said that he was the highlight of their class so far in their opinions, and they claimed that the other scholars enjoyed it as well. They have also had multiple discussions about important historical figures such as Barry Goldwater, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and others. Things the scholars are looking forward to include a group activity in which they get to do interviews with various female activists such as Attica Scott, and answering their class question as of now, which is “To what extent are we living in the 1960s?” Overall, this is a very open class with many fantastic discussions in which the students are very invested.
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