Black History Month 2021: School Assemblies, Part 1

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History has set the 2021 Black History Month theme as The Black Family: Representation, Identity, and Diversity. In going through the school’s collection, I thought it would be interesting to share four of the Lower School assemblies, as they each present information about African American culture and history to the school family. The videos will be featured each Friday, with more of an explanation of the event.

February 5: The McIntosh County Shouters at the 1999 Black History Month Special Assembly, held in the Hamilton Room of Love Hall on February 5, 1999.

February 12: Ms. Christine King Farris reads aloud from her book, My Brother Martin, and shares stories of her childhood on Friday, February 11, 2005, as the guest speaker during the 2005 Black History Month programs.

February 19: The Young Audiences Arts for Learning organization performed “Bridges That Brought Us Together and Across” on February 27, 2001 as part of the Black History Month programs that year.

February 26: We will finish out the month with the first grade performance of the Class of 2007 on February 28, 1996. It was a devotional to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The first grade teachers were Mrs. Boggs and Ms. Ownings. The video also highlights a program performed by the newly formed Diversity Awareness Club.

McIntosh County Shouters

This Lower School Assembly featured the famous McIntosh County Shouters, who are master artists of the authentic ring shout. This includes a call-and-response, percussion, and dance. Scholars trace the ring shout back to Africa, and in the low country of what became the United States, it incorporated a multitude of cultures and languages, as slaves arrived from many different countries.

“Its practice continued in those areas well into the twentieth century, even as its influence was felt in altered forms, like spiritual, jubilee, gospel music, and elements of jazz. By the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, the ring shout itself was presumed to have died out until its rediscovery in 1980 in McIntosh County.”

New Georgia Encylopedia: https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/mcintosh-county-shouters

The McIntosh Shouters were the 1993 recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, and were one of the groups who performed at the 2016 opening of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

Further Resources

• The McIntosh Shouters (official website)
• Meet the Ring Shouters (PBS, 2017)
• McIntosh County Shouters: Gullah-Geechee Ring Shout from Georgia (2010)
• Spirituals and Shout Songs from the Georgia Coast: The McIntosh Shouters (2017)
• Slave Shout Songs from the Coast of Georgia: The McIntosh Shouters (1984)
• The Bitter Southerner: McIntosh County Shouters