JBL! recently hosted students from Friends Seminary, a K-12 school from NYC, at the John Brown Farm. Their teacher, Stefan Stawnychy, sent this response to the visit, along with a few photos:
As a teacher of a high school-level course on the history of the Adirondack region, Amy Godine’s Black Woods has proven to be an indispensable resource in allowing students to access this vital narrative from both macro-level and granular perspectives. Far from positioning Timbuctoo as an exclusive enterprise meant to address racially prohibitive voting measures, Godine’s work presents as a constellation of uniquely different concerns and aspirations around citizenship, belonging, community, and humanity; each one adding a valuable touchpoint for my students to access and interrogate the choices and decisions made therein. The profound utility of the text is further extended by the exquisite “Dreaming of Timbuctoo” exhibit at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site. The immense benefit of experiential education notwithstanding, the exhibit itself provides my students with an opportunity to assess how the Timbuctoo narratives ultimately get communicated. This allows them to inquire about how stories as deep and distinct as that of the original Timbuctoo pioneers, land agents, Gerrit Smith, and John Brown can be told through a variety of formats. Similarly, the text and exhibit, working in tandem with one another, provide my students with an understanding of how this history gives shape and contour to the Adirondacks, but also how it can serve as an essential reminder of the continuing struggle for political rights and representation.
