On Wednesday January 25, students in Professor Cari Goetcheus’s Cultural Resource Assessment class accompanied by Tom Jones took a trip to rural Putnam County to experience the landscapes and places associated with Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Color Purple. The class’s main project for the semester will be working towards a potential National Register nomination for this district and this trip served as their introduction to the project and this area. The students were able to visit Walker’s childhood home and its connection with the landscape around it. Students also saw the exterior of the Ward Chapel AME Church Walker attended as a child as well as its nearby cemetery where her parents are buried. The students then visited the 19th century plantation home of the Copelan family for whom Alice’s parents worked as tenant farmers. After visits to these rural sites, the students traveled to Eatonton, GA for lunch and tours of the Georgia Writers Museum and the Uncle Remus Museum before heading back to Athens.
