Protector of the Past

Fall 2020 | By Jenna Marina Lee

While most kids were watching Disney films or Nickelodeon shows, Porsha Dossie ’14 ’18MA was consuming Ken Burns documentaries and Roots with her stepfather. Then she would attend school the next day and ask her teacher when the class was finally going to move past the Puritans and learn about Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells.

When she looks back at that precocious elementary schooler, she sees the early signs of a passion that led to her job today as program historian for the African American Civil Rights Network within the National Park Service.

“I grew up in Miami, a diverse city compared to other places, and yet we still got a very whitewashed version of history,” she says. “When I got to UCF and I was able to have courses about my history, my professors were really encouraging, telling me, ‘You know you can do this as a job? All of these things you want to research and dive deeper into, this is what we do, and you can do it too.’ That was really affirming for me.”

Now, the Burnett Honors Scholar and two-time history grad are responsible for maintaining the African American Civil Rights Network’s online database. The network presents a comprehensive narrative of the people, places, and events associated with the civil rights movement in the United States.

Most recently, she worked to get Florida’s first site — Jacksonville’s James Weldon Johnson Park, wherein in 1960 a white mob attacked Black protestors with ax handles during a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter — added to the network. She also wrapped digital resources on The Negro Motorist Green Book — made better known by the 2018 Academy Award-winning film — and on women in the civil rights movement in honor of the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote, which was celebrated in August.

Her best days on the job are when she can listen to stories from people who interacted with Martin Luther King Jr. or when she hears from someone who accessed the network’s materials.

“I once had someone email me and write, ‘I see my grandfather in that picture [of the Edmund Pettus Bridge] on your website. I had no idea he marched,’ ” she says. “The past isn’t some disconnected, faraway thing. We live it and interact with it every day even if we don’t realize it.”

https://www.ucf.edu/pegasus/protector-of-the-past/