Florida has a deep connection to Black history (and people of non-European ancestry) that is often left at the margins of school curricula. A fundamental problem of integrating Black history into K-12 classrooms is that the teachers do not have the content knowledge, in part because of the colonial, Eurocentric curriculums, but also because when Black people are introduced it is often through slavery and oppression. To counter this trend and offer a transition to decolonial futures that heralds empowering content, arts-integrated practices, and positive results that inspire Black scholars to continue with higher education and entrepreneurship, we created SAAADHI—Sankofa African American Arts & Digital Humanities Initiative. Based on evocative ethnography, a feminist theoretical and methodological intervention, our mission is to decolonize representations in the curriculum and broadcast media through making critical-art and digital humanities products that highlight underrepresented stories of people, places and ideas with an Afrofuturist lens. To accomplish this goal, we bring together university scholars, artists, the local media station, community leaders, along with teachers and students to collaborate on crafting digital humanities productions to evoke the complexity of Black lives in Florida. The presentation will offer rich examples of audio, video and multimedia that include the first-hand experience of some of the Eastside students involved in the production of the podcast Unsung Heroes in Alachua County: https://www.wuft.org/news/2022/10/14/decolonizing-the-curriculum-episode-5-unsung-heroes-and-heroines-in-alachua-county/
