During the Spring semester of my Junior year, I participated in the Honors English 400 section. This class was very interesting because it was a combination of an English and Photography class. This honors section challenged its students to do something very unusual. Each of the English students were partnered with a Photography student. We were then assigned a person that had been affected in some way by the Prince Edward County school closings in the 1960s. We were prompted to interview and photograph these people, and work together to create a magazine article that highlights parts of the person’s story that we learned while interviewing them. At the end of the semester, we put all of these articles together and created a magazine that was displayed in the Moton Museum, Prince Edward County Public Schools, Barber Shops, Hampden-Sydney College, etc. This class challenged me because it was something that I had never done before. As a Biology major, I did not think I would ever have to take part in creating a magazine! However, the woman that I interviewed was wonderful and her story influenced me to think in ways that I would not have thought in before the class. The course schedule was altered by deadlines, setbacks, and the interviewees’ prior commitments, but it was still a success in the end.
Here is a copy of the final draft of the magazine article. It does not include the pictures that the photographer took.