Hillary VanDyke, 39, of St. Petersburg is a self-proclaimed "doer of all the things."
She's an education professor who also runs a nonprofit directory for Black-owned businesses called Green Book of Tampa Bay. And, she connects Black folks to nature through hiking, biking, and kayaking. Plus, she's a documentary film maker.
WUSF spoke to VanDyke for our series highlighting important people during Black History Month.
The following is an edited transcript of that interview, in which VanDyke reflects on how history can inform our present circumstances.
Uplifting Black communities every day
Black History Month — which, of course, is always a great time to remind yourself about all of the important history related to Black folks in America, Black folks in the diaspora — but I would say, I think a beautiful thing about the area we're in is that we're really pretty intentional year-round of trying to make sure we're uplifting Black business, Black artists.
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I think our city is really diverse, has really cool neighborhoods, and within some of those neighborhoods, you can intentionally embed yourself in a Black community, supporting Black businesses, looking at Black art, or you can go downtown and see you know everybody out and about.
And there's also Black businesses spread out throughout downtown. So, Black present in St. Pete, I think, and I hope, is one of continued growth. And then the fact that we have our first Black mayor in St. Pete, I think, is a big deal because it again comes back to that idea that now young people growing up under his administration will just think, 'Oh, this is normal, right?'
Cemeteries in the classroom
And right now, what I'm most interested in is actually studying how Black cemeteries can be used in social studies education. We just have so many social studies standards, and really, any, honestly, any cemetery can be used in this way.
I'm just currently focused on historically Black cemeteries, but there's just so much that teachers can do with cemeteries to actually teach social studies.
So, I'm a big, giant history nerd and I'm also a cemetery nerd, and so it's been really cool to just combine these two loves and passions of mine, and explore how that can actually help teachers make their classrooms more engaging for students.
Along with my research interests, I'm also part of the African American Burial Grounds Project, which does a lot of work to essentially create learning opportunities for communities related to Black cemeteries, particularly ones that have been developed over.
And as a part of that project, I actually wrote some lesson plans that are on their website about the ones that are under Tropicana Field's parking lot right now. So, Oaklawn, Moffett, and Evergreen. And then I have a couple on there about Zion, which is under Robles Park Village, under one of those buildings and parking lots.
And so even within the work that they're doing to try to teach people about these places that have essentially been wiped off the map, they also just have a lot of like regular community engagement related to it that just really are super inspiring.
Using the past in the present
I think one of the platitudes that we say is, 'If you study history and learn history, we won't make the mistakes of the past.'
And then also, 'The arc of the universe is to bend toward justice.' I think realistically, if you study history, you know how to operate every time you find yourself kind of maybe back in circumstances that you thought were in the past.
So, history is important just to learn how your ancestors did the thing, so then you can be more resilient in handling the thing.
