This weekend, a lecture series called “The Other Book: Black History in Alachua County,” kicks off with its first of four lectures, focusing on the transatlantic passage enslaved Africans experienced on their way to America.
The series is named for the “other” book that Black teachers used before schools were integrated. According to event advertising, the teachers would use both the official, government-sponsored book, and other texts written by Black authors that reflected their own experiences of reality, referred to as “the other book.”
Jackie Davis, one of the event organizers, said the series is a reaction against “whitewashing” of Florida history books, and is meant to help Black and white county residents better understand local Black history.
“We want people to kind of look a little deeper,” Davis, one of the event organizers, said in a phone interview. “And it’s not in a blaming or antagonistic way. It’s more in a, let’s lift the veils off our eyes so that we see why we’re in the current state, and how we can change to have a better world that’s more fair for everyone.”
The series will be hosted over the course of four months at four venues, with a different theme set to match the venue:
Dispelling the Myths: Pre-colonial Africa
- Dr. Rik Stevenson, UF African American studies
- Harn Museum of Art
- 10 a.m.-noon on Jan. 11
Enslavement in Alachua County
- Karen Kirkman and Dr. Courtney Taylor, UF African American Studies
- Haile Homestead
- 10 a.m.-noon on Feb. 8
Jim Crow Era in Alachua County
- Dr. Michelle Dunlap and Dr. Rik Stevenson
- Alachua County Administrative Building lobby
- 10 a.m.-noon on March 8
Civil Rights to Today
- Dr. Rik Stevenson and local elected officials
- The Cotton Club Museum
- 10 a.m.-noon on April 12
The series is cosponsored by the Alachua County Community Remembrance Project, Alachua County NAACP and the Racial Justice Committee of United Church of Gainesville, funded by a grant from the Community Foundation of North Central Florida.
Organizers initially hoped to have about 40 attendees at the first event, hosted by the Harn, but as of Monday there were 73 people registered to attend.
The first event will consist of a 90-minute talk from Rik Stevenson, a University of Florida faculty member whose research focuses on the Middle Passage, slave ships and mortality.
Stevenson’s talk will be followed by a brief gallery tour at the Harn, looking at a few works that help interpret Black history.
“Our hope is that people realize that whatever they were taught in school may not be the whole story, and that sometimes you have to go to the primary source to hear the whole story,” Davis said. “Also, we want them to leave the lecture and drive around Alachua County with fresh eyes, and see familiar sights, but with new insight and understanding.”
The second event, covering enslavement in Alachua County, is to take place at Historic Haile Homestead, a home built by 56 enslaved laborers.
The third event, covering the Jim Crow era, is to take place at the county administrative building lobby, where the Alachua County Community Remembrance Project has an exhibit about lynchings in Alachua County.
The fourth event, at the Cotton Club Museum, is to include local elected officials talking about a 2018 Bureau of Economic and Business Research (BEBR) report that shows racial disparities in Alachua County, including calculations that African Americans are 8.8 times more likely than non-Hispanic white people to be incarcerated, and that the county’s African Americans’ median income is about half that of the median non-Hispanic white income.
The county leaders are to speak about what has been done to solve those problems since the report came out, and what still needs to change, Davis said.