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Reaching Local Youth by Raising the Dead

Join us for a FREE, virtual program on Tuesday, January 17th at 2:30 p.m.!

The Local History Department in the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System in Columbus, Mississippi works with the Mississippi School for Math and Science (MSMS) high school juniors on two outreach programs: Tales from the Crypt and The Eighth of May Emancipation Celebration. With both, students utilize primary sources found in the archives and learn how to research and analyze information. Each project culminates in a public program in two different city cemeteries that engages the public with our communities past. The Eighth of May Emancipation Celebration was even featured on the HBO documentary Our Towns in 2021. This presentation will share the ways in which the archives collaborates with both of these programs. Presented by Mona Vance-Ali.

Mona Vance-Ali is the Archivist for the Local History Department at the Columbus-Lowndes Public Library System. She received her MA in History/Public History from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and is currently working on her MLIS with the University of Southern Mississippi.

In 2011, she published a book titled Images of America: Columbus and is the Immediate Past-President of the Society of Mississippi Archivists. She also teaches a class on public history at Mississippi University for Women.

She has received numerous technology, programming, and collection grants including most recently a NHPRC Grant through the National Archives and Records Administration to collaborate on the creation of The Lantern Project where thousands of pre-Civil War records pertaining to enslaved persons will be digitized and searchable online.

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