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Please join the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program for a special webinar presentation on the history of voting rights struggles in Florida by Allison Mitchell, a University of Virginia PhD candidate in history. Mitchell is the recipient of SPOHP’s Julian Pleasants Travel Award for outstanding research in oral history. Mitchell’s dissertation, “Battle for the Ballot: A History of Black Electoral Politics and Voter Suppression in Florida, 1940s-2010s,” draws from the Joel Buchanan Archive of African American Oral History housed at George A. Smathers Libraries. Mitchell’s dissertation uses oral history to tell the story of hitherto forgotten African American efforts to challenge segregation and voter suppression in Florida. Dr. Sharon Austin, Professor of Political Science at UF, will provide commentary on the presentation.

Allison Mitchell is a graduate of the University of Florida. She majored in African American Studies and History and graduated Cum Laude in 2016. Ms. Mitchell was a volunteer undergraduate transcriber at the Proctor Program and she conducted oral history interviews for SPOHP’s 2016 oral history internship course, “Sport and Society.” Allison contributed to an audio podcast that explored how NCAA athletes grapple with injuries. In 2017, Ms. Mitchell was a student leader for the Mississippi Freedom Project, an annual summer experiential learning trip for UF students that explores the civil rights movement in the Mississippi Delta.

The Julian Pleasants Travel Award is a national prize awarded bi-yearly to recognize innovative research that draws from the Joel Buchanan Archive in African American Oral History and other oral history collections at the George A. Smathers Libraries. The award is named in honor of Julian Pleasants (1938-2021). The author of numerous books, Dr. Pleasants was the director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and served as a history professor at UF for nearly four decades.

For more information, please contact: Adolfhoromero@ufl.edu or Portiz@ufl.edu.