Undergraduate Research Day 2024

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/31825

Browse

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Tracing the Rhetorical Boundaries of College Park through Archival Maps
(2024) Grenning, Penelope; Bruner, Jaclyn
Through the investigations of archival maps, this research project examines the changes in the College Park cultural landscape over time. Although the fire of 1912 destroyed many documents, remaining materials help to illustrate how the university and city have shaped each other over time. Through archived maps of what we now know as College Park, detail the changes over time, including changes in environment and use of space, as well as the ways in which the relationship between the university and the town has evolved over time. Relying on accessible primary documents, this research project looks at influential events in College Park history, such as the founding era of “College Lawn,” the eventual incorporation of the City of College Park, and the devastation of the Lakeland community.
What is Justice?: Coping Methods for Families of Lynching Victims
(2024) Storm, Sadie; Bruner, Jaclyn
In 2007, Congress authorized (re)investigations into racially motivated homicides before 1970. While many of these cases would not see “courtroom justice,” victims and their families deserve to have their stories heard. This research project examines a case from 1960 in Louisiana, when five black men, Earnest McFarland, Albert Pitts, David Pitts, Alfred Marshall, and Charlie Willis, were shot by their white employer, Robert Fuller. Only Willis survived the attack. In reviewing a range of both archival and contemporary sources, I encountered a narrative from Willie Mae Pitts Sallie, sister to two of the victims, explaining why she forgave Fuller for his criminal actions. In an effort to further explore how relatives of lynched persons cope with intergenerational racial trauma, I engage Sallie’s response as an illustrative example of the power of storytelling with regard to the public memory of lynching. Storytelling is widely regarded as an identity-building and constitutive tool; for this project I produced a written anthology of short stories, to promote a broadly accessible retelling of this story, enacting a space to cope with the trauma of this memory, as well bring awareness to the trauma that lynching enacts on a family, community, and region.
Who Gets to be a Victim?: The Significance of Johnny Robinson’s Murder
(2024) Peart, Riley; Bruner, Jaclyn
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963 received attention on a federal level, and illustrated the brazen lengths of racial violence in Alabama for a broader audience. Lesser known, however, is the racially motivated murder of 16-year-old Johnny Robinson, which happened a few hours after the church bombing, when Birmingham police officer Jack Park fatally shot Robinson in the back as he was fleeing the scene of an altercation. This research project examines why Robinson’s death was overlooked and remained underreported by the media in the 1960s. While the church bombing gained extensive media attention and was portrayed as the tragic loss of young, innocent black lives, Robinson's case was framed in newspaper coverage not as a victim of racial violence but as a troublemaker evading police, declaring his death an "accidental" shooting. The difference in media coverage and public perception between these two significant events juxtaposes the rhetorical frame of “victimhood;” a frame recognizable to contemporary audiences, especially following the protests in the summer of 2020 after George Floyd’s murder by a white, Minneapolis police officer. Drawing on primary documents, conclusions made from a requested FOIA report, and parallels to the 2020 protests for George Floyd, this research seeks to shed light on the factors that contributed to Robinson's case being overlooked and denied the justice it deserves.