Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By NOAH WORTHAM | Managing Editor

MONTEVALLO – Residents will have the opportunity to hear from multiple voices on the subject of Black history and the African American experience during an upcoming panel in Montevallo.

The Montevallo Legacy Project is set to host the “Stories Our Own Way: Black History Now, Then & Beyond” on Sunday, Feb. 4 from 2-3:30 p.m. on the Rebecca J. Luker Stage in the Center for the Arts at the University of Montevallo.

The event is sponsored by the Shelby County NAACP and the Montevallo AAUW and the panel will feature multiple individuals who are considered leaders in their respective communities.

Joyce Jones will moderate the discussion and the panel will feature Albert “Peter” Datcher, Theangelo Perkins and Elvie Schooley.

The panel will last approximately one hour and will be followed by a reception with snacks in the lobby. During the reception, copies of “Untold Stories of Black Montevallo Vol. 2” will be available for pickup.

Panel speaker Schooley is a licensed master social worker and the executive director of DRUM the Program, a nonprofit that serves central Alabama with a goal of providing students with the experience of West African drum and dance coupled with artistic and written self-expression.

Datcher will join the panel for discussion and is a family and community historian who descends from enslaved families who have worked on the same Harpersville farmland for six generations. Datcher currently displays photographs and artifacts that tell the story of his family’s journey from enslavement to freedom to becoming farmers at the Datcher History House.

Perkins previously served as the first Black mayor of Harpersville, served on the Harpersville City Council and is a certified municipal official. He serves as a bus driver with Shelby County Schools and previously served at Vincent High School as choir director, color guard sponsor and sophomore class sponsor. Perkins is the pastor and founder of Liberty Christian Church of Harpersville and a member of Evangel Temple Church.