Four UMES seniors who took an experimental English course this fall earned honorariums for essays they wrote for a routine class assignment after watching the 2021 documentary “Summer of Soul.”
Kaila Vaughn was awarded a $400 prize from the Essex County (N.J.) Chapter of The Links Inc., which sponsored “HBCU: The Black Film Experience,” a cultural outreach initiative the volunteer service organization launched earlier this year.
“I was surprised I won,” Vaughn said. “I enjoyed watching the documentary, so it wasn’t too hard to write about being a black woman and reflecting on my shared experience with music in the black community.”
Vaughn graduates Dec. 17 and is already looking ahead. “I’m saving my prize money for graduate school,” she said.
Also recognized were Augustus Roberts ($200), St. Jerome Reeves $(100) and Dante Turner ($50).
They were among six UMES upperclassmen who enrolled in “Afro-futurism,” a pilot class “tracking the roles of technology, art, history, science and the progression of the past leading toward an empowering future via an African-American lens.”
As Dr. Amy Hagenrater-Gooding fine-tuned the course syllabus, The Links’ Tammye Jones was contacting historically Black institutions from her home in northern New Jersey to gauge interest in a grassroots project “designed to introduce college students … to documentaries and films that tell our stories and history.”
Hagenrater-Gooding said the serendipitous connection with The Links and the group’s proposed film-discussion project fit nicely with topics she wanted to present in class.
As the fall semester began, Hagenrater-Gooding and counterparts at eight other HBCUs were onboard with encouraging an estimated 400 students to watch a new documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. The critically acclaimed film was directed by the multi-talented Ahmir Thompson, better known as Questlove.
Dr. Karma B. Warren, president of the Essex County Chapter of The Links Inc., was looking “to encourage insightful conversations between college professors, students and the film’s producers, where possible.”
Hagenrater-Gooding came away heartened by the collaboration following a late-September virtual conference between educators and Links members after students viewed the film.
“This outreach opportunity has proven to be such an enriching one for our students,” she said.
Jones, who spearheaded The Links’ efforts to encourage HBCU participation, said “the professors’ discussion was smart, on-point and relevant to today’s issues facing the Black community – then and now.” Earlier this semester, Jones, an HBCU alumna, was also instrumental in arranging for the UMES women’s golf team to visit Baltusrol Golf Club, where student-athletes got a behind-the-scenes perspective of how a renowned championship course operates.
Links organizers said they chose ‘Summer of Soul’ for their project because the film presented “many rich discussion topics derived from the Harlem Cultural Festival 1969 – culture, race, politics, black history, pride, music.”
They also challenged students to consider writing essays – “Voices from the Soul,” the chapter called it – by identifying the film’s most important messages and how those messages inspired them.
Vaughn’s 978-word essay noted, in part, that “music has become something to be praised in the Black community. How we listen to music now has become ingrained in us as a people. Our community is built on it. It’s something that will always bring us together.”
“I want Black people to be able to do things without having the doubt of it failing because we are Black,” she wrote in her conclusion. “‘Summer of Soul’ inspires me to be unapologetically Black, while I move forward and take up space.”
In addition to UMES, other participating HBCUs were: Cheyney, Coppin State, Delaware State, Hampton, Morgan State, Norfolk State, Virginia Union and Simmons College of Kentucky. As a small gesture of appreciation, $100 was sent to each of the participating HBCUs.
The Links, Inc. is an international, not-for-profit corporation established in 1946. It counts nearly 14,000 woman of color as members of 284 chapters in 41 states, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of the Bahamas and the United Kingdom. It is among the nation’s oldest and largest volunteer service organizations committed to enriching, sustaining and ensuring the culture and economic survival of African Americans and other persons of African ancestry. The Essex County (NJ) Chapter, The Links, Incorporated was established in 1986.
