Interpretations
Here, you'll discover a collection of speeches, essays, and articles that transcend historical facts to share the diverse opinions of our community in Montevallo. We hope these stories inspire you to reflect on your own experiences and feelings. We'd love for you to join the conversation by sharing your own stories and reflections with us for publication on our website. Feel free to email us your interpretations here.
Culmination of the 2024-2025 JOIP internship project
In partnership with the Jean O’Connor-Snyder Internship Program, the Montevallo Listening Project worked with University of Montevallo undergraduates Damian McCrickard and Bridget McCurrach during the 2024–2025 school year to explore the town’s queer community through digital storytelling and community organizing.
Their project traced Montevallo’s queer history—its silences, celebrations, and generational threads—by building relationships, hosting intergenerational events, and conducting oral history interviews. This blog post offers their final reflection, blending research, personal insight, and community quotes that invite us to consider the importance of community and memory.
Forward
Elvin B. Thompson’s foreword to Untold Stories of Black Montevallo, Vol. 3 offers a powerful personal reflection on the town’s Black history—stories often left untold, yet central to understanding Montevallo’s true legacy. Drawing from lived experience, memory, and place, Thompson weaves together tales of faith, community, perseverance, and everyday heroism. From ghost stories passed down through generations to the spiritual roots of local churches, his words invite readers to honor the past while envisioning a future shaped by truth and remembrance.
Lost and found: Meet the 2024-2025 JOIP interns
In 2024, the MLP partnered with University of Montevallo undergraduates Damian McCrickard and Bridget McCurrach through the Jean O’Connor-Snyder Internship Program. For their first project, the interns were challenged to interview and write about one another, using a multimedia format that incorporated photos, audio, and transcripts. This creative exercise allowed them to bring their work to life through exploring the art of digital storytelling.
The soul of the garden
Discover the profound significance of Montevallo's Memorial Garden, established in honor of two unidentified victims of an 1889 lynching. This garden, part of EJI's historical marker project, is a place of remembrance, healing, and reconciliation, reflecting on the racial injustices of the past and offering hope for a more just future.
Four years on: the EJI lynching marker revisited
Four years ago the Montevallo Remembrance Project, a citizen's coalition, partnered with the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery to bring a commemorative lynching marker to town. One of the coalition’s co-leaders reflects on the meaning of the marker, then and now.
Montevallo needs to change, or it is going to die
After returning from an enlightening conference on queer history from the south, MLP Board of Director Josie Daisy expresses her frustration with Montevallo’s lack of vision for an inclusive future.
UM students reckon with untold stories of enslaved people on campus
Students in the Fall 2023 Introduction to Peace and Justice Studies course at UM were challenged to write about the inherited narratives around King House that left out the enslaved people who built it. MLP Intern and student Veronica Kloss looks at this obscured history and proposes community collaboration in a project of remembrance.
The whitewashing of King House: A disclaimer
Editor in chief of The Alabamian, Cady Inabenett, informs and reflects on the harmful stories around UM’s King House.
Dr. Gregory Samuels urges reckoning with America's racial past
Dr. Gregory Samuels is Associate Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Montevallo and former Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer. He spoke on Feb 16, 2023, to visitors from Los Angeles at the EJI lynching marker on Montevallo's Main Street.