DURHAM, NC.- Students in a new undergraduate course offered by the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University, Documentary Fieldwork Practicum, worked this spring with a community group in rural Halifax County, North Carolina, to document the history of the New Deal resettlement town of Tillery and to create an exhibit for the community's museum. Remembering Tillery: Our Community, Our Own Land will be displayed in History House, an original Farm Security Administration resettlement house that has been refurbished as a museum by the community-organizing group Concerned Citizens of Tillery (CCT).

Among its many projects, CCT has been collecting photographs and oral and visual histories of Tillery residents since 1995. Students in the CDS course worked with these materials, and others they collected in documentary fieldwork projects, to refurbish the History House exhibition. On display for an indefinite period of time, the exhibit includes forty photo and text panels, contemporary photographs of Halifax County farmers, and various artifacts from Tillery's past.

The Tillery Resettlement Farm was one of 113 such projects created by the U.S. government during the 1930s and '40s as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs. The Tillery Farms Project, created in 1935, was one of the largest resettlement projects in the country; it was also unusual because it had both an African American section (Tillery) and a white section (Roanoke Farms).

The population of Tillery today (about 3,000) is 98 percent African American; 85 percent of the residents are over 60 years old, and most are female. Almost all of the community's farming jobs have disappeared; low-paying factory jobs, located fifteen to forty-five miles away, are now the main employment option.

Following an approach that will be typical for the course in the future, the CDS students combined principles of collaborative documentary work, historical research methodologies, and a variety of exhibition techniques to rework existing museum displays with a focus on the themes of sharecropping and land ownership, family, work and agriculture, education, faith, activism, and community.

They used photographs, text panels, historical documents, newspaper and magazine articles, and audio and video sources to construct an interactive narrative of Tillery's past, present, and future. The educational exhibit--intended to appeal to school groups, tourists, and other interested visitors to and residents of the community--will open in History House in Tillery on April 30, 2005.

Taught by Charlie Thompson, CDS education and curriculum director, the course engaged a range of students, ten in all--including a freshman, a senior biology major, and a sociology major who has become a photographer, all Duke students; and a graduate student in folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--who worked in close collaboration with Concerned Citizens of Tillery. A community-based organization founded in 1978, CCT promotes cultural awareness and works to improve the social, economic, and educational welfare of local citizens through the self-development of its members.

Documentary Fieldwork Practicum, a Duke undergraduate course, focuses on collaborations with community-based groups interested in completing documentary projects that highlight the culture, history, aesthetics, and politics of the local community through photographs, oral histories, exhibitions, films, Web site, and publications. Course readings focus on aspects of conducting community work, ethics, and the special challenges involved in doing and exhibiting ethnography and other fieldwork.

The course received support from the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education.