Who are Black Belt Citizens?

In the southern part of the United States, there exists a region of land where the topsoil is so dark, it appears black. This region extends through many states, and Alabama is no exception. At the heart of this region is the city of Uniontown. This is a strong community of people with a rich history. The city is ingrained in the civil rights movement for a variety of reasons, including being the home of Coretta Scott King- activist, author, and civil rights leader. This legacy of strength still is evident within the community today.

Back in 2005, a landfill proposal loomed over the city. This proposal put the people of Uniontown’s lives at risk, threatening their health and wellbeing as well as the preservation of gravestones in the New Hope Cemetery. Several of the local community members organized in response, fighting for justice in their town. This group became known as Black Belt Citizens. Despite their efforts, the Arrowhead Landfill came to Uniontown in 2007. However, a movement was born. Over 15 years later, this organization is still working to better its community.

What followed this opening was the shipping of toxic coal ash into the community and a rise in issues with pollution, health, and environmental equity. Furthermore, the development of an inadequate sewage facility is further causing harm. Typically, in order for a treatment plant to be approved, there needs to be testing done in the area. A lack of soil percolation has caused contamination and likely health problems for the people in the area. Despite clearly detrimental environmental issues, Black Belt Citizens is fighting a very tough battle. The Landfill has threatened individuals in Black Belt Citizens as a scare tactic. Although those lawsuits were dropped, citizens are now afraid to speak up because of the potential consequences.

Even through the many challenges they face, Black Belt Citizens is determined to keep fighting. The BBC website archives articles and photos relevant to BBC’s mission from the past five years. This organization is very active within the local government and has continually worked to advocate for decades.

Stakeholders

Design Team

We were initially introduced to the project by Dr. Shorna Allred, a Cornell Professor in the Center for Conservation Social Sciences and the Dept. of Natural Resources and the Environment. We also had the opportunity to work with Neelia Heath, a Masters Student at Cornell researching the relationship between environmental inequalities and economic injustices in BIPOC communities.

Our early meetings were primarily with BBC President and Perry County Commissioner Benjamin Eaton. These meetings were incredibly insightful and provided more context as to the struggles BBC faced as an organization. Mr. Eaton’s passion for his community was evident from the beginning and made us determined to support BBC in the best way possible. We were later joined by genealogist Mary Jones-Fitts, BBC Secretary and President of the Alabama Archives.

Design Challenge

The beginning of the semester was spent primarily listening, trying to understand the challenges BBC faced and determine the best course of action to move forward. After proposing a few initial ideas, we quickly learned there were several important limitations we would have to navigate through.

Communication and organization. Our primary focus was to make it easier to communicate between members and the community at large.
Internet issues. Commissioner Eaton informed us that many people in Uniontown either do not have access or simply do not use the internet.
Respect. The city of Uniontown has a very strong legacy, and it was important that our final outputs, in whatever form they entailed, conveyed that.
Cultural differences. It was critical that we were listening to and empathizing with the community members, and truly working with them to create a solution that would benefit them.

Our Process

IDEATING: Newsletter

Immediately, it was clear that any sort of social media campaign proposal was not the right fit for BBC at this time. Our group had to get creative and think of other ways to spread the word about the current events as well as the history of the area to the community. We had to use strategic storytelling by transmediating the oral histories that Dr. Allred and Neelia had previously recorded.

We determined that the best approach to help Black Belt Citizens tackle some of the issues they’re currently facing was through a transmedia newsletter. This would take on several recursive iterations, targeting specific audience members, each with a specific goal. For example, one version could be purposefully more digestible for a younger audience, specifically school-aged kids to encourage engagement in the organization. Another version could simply highlight community events and rallies, and why people should take action.

One way to accomplish this specifically is through including member profiles, starting with Commissioner Eaton himself, which will highlight the necessity and importance of the work done by Black Belt . Including excerpts from the oral histories that have been recorded, the newsletter will appeal to the pathos of town members as many of them will be able to relate to the stories and experiences. Moreover, the newsletter will focus on current events around District 5 to show the progress of the movement and inspire more people to join

We made a draft template for the Newsletter, in order to show it to our partners and to understand what it would potentially look like.

Reframe #1

Ultimately, we decided that the newsletter was not a sustainable option. Our group would only be working with BBC for a semester, and it wouldn’t be feasible for us or for future students in the course to write the newsletter and be responsible for its distribution. Printing costs were also a concern for the community members: it soon became clear we needed to reevaluate.

Part of this reframe was re-evaluating who our stakeholders are. Originally, we felt that the primary stakeholders were the Black Belt Citizens as an organization. We spent most of our meetings getting context from Commissioner Ben Eaton, trying to determine how best to support the organization as a whole. However, what we realized is that perhaps the way to have a long-lasting impact in supporting the efforts of Black Belt Citizens would be to support Dr. Allred in her work, helping to make the information from the oral histories more accessible, user friendly, and able to be spread and interpreted quickly. Therefore, our primary focus shifted to utilizing the oral reports collected by Dr. Allred in a way that was easily digestible, engaging, and enticing for viewers.

Furthermore, expert genealogist and member of Black Belt Citizens Mary Jones-Fitts joined our meetings. Ms. Jones-Fitts provided great insight and graciously allowed us to use her oral report for our project.

Why, What, How

As we went forward with our project, it was important to stay connected to these central questions:

Why is Black Belt Citizens such an important organization to support?
What are we trying to accomplish?
And how will this be accomplished?

The ‘why’ question is complex but crucial. Black Belt Citizens serves as a unifying force for community members, working to create policy changes to better the welfare of the community as well as to preserve the history of the area, specifically the Civil Rights History.

The ‘what’ question was the primary focus of this reframing but did not change drastically throughout the course of the semester. On a macro-level, the ‘what’ our team is hoping to accomplish is to support Black Belt Citizens and their mission to combat environmental racism. On the micro-level, our specific team is supporting this effort by focussing on and extending the work of Dr. Allred.

However, the ‘how’ question did drastically change at many points throughout the semester. Initially, our ‘how’ was the newsletter project, however, this has since shifted into several other ideas.

IDEATING: Map and Info Comics

We had several ideas about how to accomplish this. One way, which was initially introduced to us by Dr. Allred during our first meeting, was to create a map prototype to work in conjunction with her grant application. Over the summer, Dr. Allred applied for a grant to create an online database in order to archive the oral histories from members of Black Belt Citizens and other community members. The map prototype that we would work on highlighted the history of Perry County, Alabama through information that we gathered from several of the oral histories. In order to support this effort, our team generated the informational inputs, essentially creating a ‘blueprint’ of the site platform utilizing Figma software.

The second idea our team had was to convert the oral histories already collected by Neelia and Prof. Allred into another media format such as info comics. By transmediating these stories, we would be able to reach different audiences, and again increase the ability to engage more people. This route was likely to have a tangible impact, as many projects in the past have successfully created these informational comics and organizations have even incorporated them into their reports.

REFRAME #2

After initially pitching these ideas to Neelia and Dr. Allred, we met with Ms. Jones-Fitts and Mr. Eaton. Immediately, there was some hesitation with these ideas, particularly with the info comic idea. It was important that our final outputs are serious, and will be interpreted by the viewers as such. While the comics had a serious message, the community members felt that the format would make light of the situation. They also did not believe that this format would draw young people in. With some great feedback, we decided to reframe the comic idea into an infographic, and move forward with the interactive map idea, focusing specifically on Mary Jones-Fitss’ oral history.

Final Prototypes

We decided to utilize Ms. Jones-Fitts’ oral history for the map prototype because as a genealogist and historian, she is very familiar with several of the cemeteries in the area. These cemeteries are crucial to documenting and respecting the legacy of Uniontown. We built the prototype in Figma, an online software platform that allows users to design the aesthetics and potential capabilities of a web page.

We focused on converting Mr. Eaton’s oral history into an infographic. This proved to be somewhat time-consuming, as gathering applicable photos and allowing time for feedback to occur prolonged the process. However, through utilizing this feedback, we were able to create an end result that our partners approved of and felt was useful.

Next Steps

Our group worked hard to establish the framework of helping our partners, and to determine what plausible steps forward could be. Potential continuations of this project could incorporate a variety of aspects.

Ideally, Dr. Allred will be receiving the grant money. This would allow the map idea to be built by professionals and potentially integrated into the website. However, if the grant is denied, it may be possible for students with a web design, computer science, and information science background to build this over the course of the semester.

Secondly, the oral histories can be converted into infographics. There is a significant amount of material contained within the oral histories that have so far remained untouched. The process of conversion takes time, as it is important that the interviewee has the opportunity to see the infographic and provide feedback. This ensures that their story is accurately portrayed, in a manner that they see fit.

Final Presentation

On the final day of class, partners and teams presented their work to the other partners and teams, sharing their design process, key deliverables, and reflections on the semester-long collaboration, all recorded on video.