Croppin' in Da South

Croppin in Da South is an immersive, interdisciplinary arts and storytelling experience designed

for middle school students that explores the history, culture, and lived experiences of African

American families in the rural South, with particular attention to East Texas. At its core, the

project uses cotton as both a material and a metaphor to help students understand how

something as ordinary as a plant can carry extraordinary histories of labor, resilience, trauma,

creativity, and survival.  

Rather than learning history as something distant or contained within textbooks, students are

invited to step inside it through art, performance, sound, and storytelling. The experience blends

visual art, textile work, oral history, theater, photography, music, and digital media to create an

immersive environment where students engage with the past as something living and present.

Through this process, they begin to understand how African American families and communities

have preserved identity and culture through generations of struggle and transformation, and

how artists today continue to use creative expression as a form of documentation, resistance,

and healing.  

The project is intentionally interdisciplinary, connecting history, English language arts, visual and

media arts, technology, and social emotional learning. Students critically examine the historical

foundations of slavery, Reconstruction, and Sharecropping, while also exploring how these

histories continue to shape identity and opportunity today. At the same time, they strengthen

literacy skills through narrative writing and reflection, develop media literacy through multimedia

creation, and build empathy, identity awareness, and collaboration skills through shared creative

work.

By the end of the experience, students leave with a deeper understanding of the historical

significance of cotton in the American South and the ways in which African American

communities have demonstrated resilience across generations. Croppin in Da South ultimately

positions young people as storytellers, historians, and artists, affirming that history is not only

something to be studied, but something to be remembered, reimagined, and carried forward

through creative expression.