Traveling While Black & Going Down South
ASF Insights with Georgette Norman
Sept. 18, 2021 | Noon | Shakespeare Garden
Presented by Auburn University at Motgomery

Traveling While Black & Going Down South

Since the beginnings of “Black life” in America, Black experiences have been defined by travel, displacement, and resistance. Fast forward.  What was it like to “travel while Black” and take a trip “down South” to visit family and friends in an age of extreme segregation where “whites only” signs were found everywhere? How did Black people navigate their “road trip(s)”?    Did they subject themselves to humiliation or did they say seeing Mama, Big Mama and the family was more important and risk the journey? Shoebox Picnic Road Side: Route One tells us it wasn’t all pain.

GEORGETTE NORMAN is a native of Montgomery, Ala. and was educated through grade 12 at Alabama State College Laboratory School. She earned a B.A. in History (Fisk University), an M.A. in Education (Hampton Institute) and a certificate in Humanistic Education (University of Miami) Miami, FL. She has taught in public and private schools on the mainland and the Virgin Islands, at the College of the Virgin Islands, Alabama State University, and Auburn University Montgomery. She is a former board member of the Arts Council of Montgomery and founded the Alabama African American Arts Alliance under the auspices of Alabama State Council on the Arts in 1992. She was the first director of the Troy University Rosa Parks Museum and partnered with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services (SITES) to develop “361 Days: The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story” for the 50th Anniversary of the Boycott. The Exhibit explored the crucial historic events that ignited the national Civil Rights Movement and was underwritten by AARP. Georgette currently serves on the Board of Director for the Cloverdale Playhouse. She works as an independent consultant in the arts and conducts workshops in creativity, cultural diversity and healing history. Georgette enjoys theater, writing poetry, and painting: She sees herself as an observer and active participant in life and believes her life to be her self-portrait.