Dr. Shari L. Williams: Along the Ridge: Black Belt Memory, Rural Landscapes, and the Public History Work

Interviewed By Lamont Jack Pearley:

For June’s African American Folklorist of the Month, we honor Dr. Shari L. Williams, a public historian, independent scholar, preservationist, and cultural steward whose work centers the historical and cultural landscapes of Alabama’s Black Belt. As the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in History from Auburn University, Dr. Williams brings a powerful scholarly and community-rooted perspective to the study of rural historic landscapes, Black social history, genealogy, cemeteries, archaeology, and cultural traditions.

Her work grew from nonprofit volunteer service in historic preservation in Macon County, Alabama, where she began to see the depth of history embedded in rural roads, cemeteries, family lands, migration routes, community memory, and the everyday practices of Black life. That work led her to establish The Ridge Macon County Archaeology Project, a public-facing initiative that pays homage to historic rural communities located along a ridge line in southeast Macon County.

The Ridge is not just a place on a map. It is a landscape of layered memory. Native American trading paths, the Old Federal Road, Black settlement, rural community life, cemetery traditions, and the social histories of race, gender, and class all meet there. Through The Ridge Interpretive Center and the Alabama Old Federal Road Museum, Dr. Williams provides educational programming for students, teachers, local residents, and visitors, helping communities understand the historical and cultural significance of the region.

This episode invites listeners into a conversation about what it means to preserve Black rural history from the ground up—through land, memory, archaeology, public history, genealogy, cemetery research, and community care. Dr. Williams’s work reminds us that African American folklore is not only found in songs, stories, foodways, and festivals, but also in landscapes, headstones, roads, naming traditions, family memory, and the everyday ways Black communities have remembered, survived, and made meaning across generations.