Bringing Civil Rights History to Life

Junshan Liu and Richard Burt, McWhorter School of Building Science, are part of an interdisciplinary team focused on development of photogrammetry technology to recreate significant historic events such as Selma’s Bloody Sunday combining authentic event photographs and current 3-D laser scans. New technology is making it possible to bring history to life in ways previously unimagined. As historians and guardians of cultural artifacts, we now have the capacity to move beyond preservation and stagnant displays to sensory experiences capable of engaging and enlightening future generations.

Once completed, this multi-phased project will bring to life the setting of one of the most significant events in 20th century American history, Selma’s Bloody Sunday, while also laying groundwork for a much broader application of the technology to future historic documentation. Taking the past into the digital world offers the public opportunities to explore historic landscape for themselves and draw from it experiences that traditional documentation/presentation cannot recreate. 

The research team has received funding through a National Park Service African American Civil Rights Grant to develop a comprehensive historic structures survey as well as a CADC Seed Grant and McWhorter Fund for Excellence Grant. The project was also featured as part of the 2021 Tiger Giving Day. The team presented their initial work at the Auburn Faculty Research Symposium in January 2021.

Junshan Liu is Associate Professor and Dr. Richard Burt is Head of Auburn’s McWhorter School of Building Science. Danielle Willkens, project collaborator, is Assistant Professor of history and theory at the Georgia Tech School of Architecture.

Related Stories:
Edmund Pettus Bridge: Historic Structures Report
The Selma Project