Contact: Sam Kealhofer

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Last week at the semester’s end, Mississippi State University students enrolled in a community-engaged learning class held an event in downtown Starkville to present their digital humanities project honoring the legacy of Dr. Douglas L. Conner, a noted civil rights activist and one of the first Black physicians to practice in Starkville.

The project is a student-led effort originating from a digital ethnic studies class taught by Dhanashree Thorat, assistant professor in MSU’s Department of English.

“The course encouraged students to apply their communication skills in a local context. By working on the digital project, students also developed a better understanding of the civil rights struggle in our local community, and we hope this story about Dr. Conner’s important work will be accessible to future generations,” Thorat said.

Students worked together to create a digital exhibit on Conner’s life. The exhibit includes student essays that draw from Conner’s autobiography “A Black Physician’s Story,” his archival papers and scholarly sources to explore school desegregation, economic boycott and protests, anti-discrimination lawsuits, political activism and other civil rights topics.

“My essay was on the dismissal and displacement of Black educators after public school desegregation,” said Sydney Bowen-Sweet, a senior English major from Kosciusko. “I was surprised to learn about the decline in the number of Black educators in the Starkville-Oktibbeha School District after desegregation. Even after the school district was successfully desegregated, Dr. Conner continued to work on such issues,” she said.

At the event, community members helped transcribe Conner’s handwritten documents, recorded their memories of him and heard a speech given by his daughter, Divian Conner. There also was a Black history tour of downtown Starkville led by Chris Taylor, former president of the Oktibbeha County NAACP chapter.

“I grew up in Starkville, which is part of what made this project so important to me,” said James Durr, a junior English major. “Growing up here you can easily get caught in a bubble and miss key details about our history. It was enlightening to step into what Dr. Conner experienced. It made me rethink how Starkville got to be where it is. Reading the archives along with his autobiography set the reality that I was studying real events that built Starkville. And when talking to the community members it stuck how much it still affects us today. Working on these projects feels so much more important and rewarding to me because of what they mean to my community,” he said.

Community members are encouraged to share their stories of Conner and upload them to the project site: https://ablackphysiciansstory.wordpress.com/voices/.

For more details about MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences or the university’s Center for Community-Engaged Learning, visit www.cas.msstate.edu or www.ccel.msstate.edu/.

Mississippi State University is taking care of what matters. Learn more at www.msstate.edu.