About

Sydney Johnson is a graduate student in history at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. This project is related to her thesis and is the digital history component.

Digital history is something Sydney is passionate about because it gives people the opportunity to learn about a topic that interests them and is extremely accessible.

The main goals of this project are to interact with the Wilmington community and give a space for people to share their stories. This website is broken up into three sections, "See," "Hear," and "Learn."

In "See," visitors will be given an opportunity to visualize the events during the 1971 boycott both in the form of a map, and timeline. Especially for Wilmington residents, this section is important because it enables people to connect with these spaces.

In "Hear," visitors will be able to hear testimony from former students about their experiences in the high schools and during the boycott. This section is relevant because the Wilmington Ten has not been covered from their perspective. Historians such as Kenneth Janken acknowledge that the student boycott was the origin of unrest in 1971, but they mostly focus on the imprisonment of the ten and the political outcome. That story is important, but not the focus of this project. Since students started the boycott, I want to hear it from them.

In "Learn," visitors will be able to understand what sources I used to gather this data. Additionally, there are other resources that visitors will be able to browse to learn more about the topic on their own.

Some of the questions I hope to address in this project are: what was the experience of Black students before and after the 1971 boycott? Were white students aware of the issues Black students were complaining about? Who joined the boycott? Why did they join? Once the Ten were imprisoned did students advocate for their release?

These are only a few questions I hope to answer through this project.

I hope everyone who visits learns something and leaves this site with knowledge they will share with the rest of the world.

If you, or anyone you know of, would like to share your story please feel free to contact me or use the information Google form linked below to tell me your story.