Take the crack, crack, crack of hard leather balls smacking into concrete, mingled with cheers yelled out in Euskara, a language unrelated to any other. Add the scent of roasting
Horse rustling, multiple aliases and bigamy are probably the furthest things from your mind as you gaze across the peaceful lake at Snooks Bottom Open Space in Fruita.
Erika Jackson and Sarah Swedberg donât wait for Black History Month to teach Colorado Mesa students about the history of race in America.
This past fall, Swedberg taught a course on American slavery, and several of those students this semester are in Jacksonâs upper-level History of Race, Immigration and Ethnicity in America class.
âSarah and I work together extensively, and whatâs been incredibly helpful in me teaching this class is that I would say a third of the students in my class took American Slavery last semester with Sarah,â Jackson said. âWe were talking (recently), and they kept saying, âOh, yeah, this connects to this thing that we learned about American Slavery.â And Iâm just like this, this is so great, so Iâm wondering if we should think about a way to pair the two classes together in the future, because those students having that prior knowledge that theyâre bringing into the classes is really essential.â