January 2021 and ended June, 2022.  Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee Awarded $1,500 Grant to Springfield H.S. of Science and Technology. 

The Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee awarded a grant of $1,500 to William De Vos, a teacher at the Springfield H.S of Science and Technology for a project, “Civil Rights: Past, Present and Future.”Mr. De Vos submittedan outstanding proposal in response to the Sojourner Truth Committee’s Request for Proposals (RFP) from public school districts in Hampshire and Hampden Counties. This is the first year that the Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee issued an RFP for educational and walking tour projects.  

About 30 high school students (grades 9-12) in African-American history classes participated in Walking Tours of Sojourner Truth’s Florence and a visit to the W. E. B. DuBois Library at UMASS.  The long term goal was that “students come away feeling empowered, excited and engaged with current events surrounding race relations within their community, nationally and globally.”   A short term goal was “to give students the opportunity to express which issues they believe are the most pressing in their community today, have them formulate arguments, and vote on which issues to address and take action” so that “students learn essential components of African American history through community engagement.”  

This grant was made possible by a donation from the Marisa Labozzetta & Martin Wohl Family Fund.

Since 2013, the Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee has partnered with local schools to undertake grant-funded projects to integrate the history of Sojourner Truth and 19th-century abolitionism into the curriculum. Our recent projects are listed below.

From 2015 to 2018, the Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee received funding from the Northampton Education Foundation's Small Grants Program for collaborative local history projects with Northampton public schools. These projects educated third and fifth grade students about the history and legacy of Sojourner Truth, the abolitionist movement, and social activism in 19th-century Florence through a walking tour and accompanying reading materials. Each year approximately 100 students from five different classes participated in the walking tours.

In 2018, the Committee was awarded an $8,000 Endowment Fund Grant from the NEF for our project “Sojourner’s Truth in the 21st Century: Applying Local History to Fifth Grade Curriculum.” In partnership with two Northampton teachers, Putnam Goodwin-Boyd (Leeds) and Thomas Chang (Jackson Street), we will be developing a curriculum unit on the local history of abolitionism and race in contemporary times and bringing all ten fifth grade classes in Northampton on walking tours of the African American Heritage Trail. The students will create a website that will present Sojourner’s history, pictures, and video of her neighborhood in Florence, and help students think about why we study these historic figures and what students can learn about their own values and ideas about cultural integration in our country. The website will be expanded by classes in future years. At the end of the grant, the curriculum will be distributed for use throughout the school district.

Commonwealth Academy

In the fall of 2014, the Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee received a second Engaging New Audiences grant from Mass Humanities to fund a project in partnership with Commonwealth Academy in Springfield, MA, which brought 75 students and their teachers on a walking tour of the African American Heritage Trail in Florence, MA, sharing the history and legacy of abolitionism in Florence, with young members of the local community.

Commonwealth Academy is an independent coeducational college preparatory academy in downtown Springfield enrolling 75 students in grades 3-10, with 13 faculty members. All 75 students participated in the project, and as a culminating activity, staged a performance of the musical production "Sojourner's Truth."

The grant also funded the Sojourner Truth Committee’s efforts to improve its educational materials and online interactive walking tour, allowing the committee to more deeply engage with a larger audience. An enhanced video tour, which incorporated video footage, primary source documents, and commentary from tour guide Steve Strimer, was launched online.

New Leadership Charter High School

In Spring 2013, with generous grant support from Mass Humanities, the Sojourner Truth Memorial Committee partnered with the New Leadership Charter High School in Springfield, MA. Students and teachers were the first to use the new curriculum, which integrated our newly launched interactive online tour, an educational packet of primary and secondary source materials, and theatrical materials from the Enchanted Circle Theater’s production about Sojourner Truth, “I Will Shake Every Place I Go To.” Students also traveled to Florence to experience walking tours of the African American Heritage Trail.