A public forum held in Collinsville, Alabama on May 21 used documents of local history—including the World War II diary of a Collinsville resident, newspaper accounts of the fire that devastated Collinsville in 1900, and a collection of Cherokee myths—to help citizens explore the town's past and imagine its future. "Imagining Collinsville" drew together 26 citizens and community leaders, including members of the historical association, public library, and downtown redevelopment boards.

Mark Wilson, assistant director of the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University, explains that the Center has been engaged in a year-long partnership with the David Matthews Center for Civic Life in presenting a series of community forums designed to help Collinsville residents "develop the habit of deliberative decision making." The first three forums used the National Issues Forums model and discussion guides. For the fourth, the organizers decided to incorporate civic reflection discussions of local history. Wilson and other community leaders were introduced to civic reflection through an Auburn University webinar presented by Elizabeth Lynn in February 2009.

The documents used in "Imagining Collinsville" were chosen to reflect diverse aspects of the community's past. Among them was the diary of Charles Hall (1918-1977), the son of a prominent local family who did military service on submarines during World War II. Wilson came across the diary by chance, while exploring the state archives website. Collinsville residents learned that Hall was not only a writer but a gifted one. His diary contains both a good deal of humor and Hall's reflections on mortality and his experiences as a citizen soldier. Accounts of the 1900 fire, in whose wake only two buildings were left standing despite heroic efforts by citizen bucket brigades, "showed that a community can experience significant trauma and survive." The Cherokee myths were selected because Sequoia, who invented the Cherokee writing system, spent a good part of his life in Collinsville's county, Dekalb. Though none of Sequioia's own writings have survived, the myths acknowledged the contributions of his culture to Collinsville history.

Wilson describes the documents as providing to participants "the wonderful asset of our own story, and a window on the deeper realities and universal issues humans experience." A value of using humanities texts, he says, is that they "provide the necessary distance that people need to talk about profound and challenging issues in a non-threatening way." He believes that the practice of civic reflection tends to be "a truly democratic practice. . . leveling differences between participants and allowing for a free-flowing conversation that doesn't seem inhibited by race or class." Collinsville has experienced major demographic changes in the past decade due to the influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants to work in the textile mills, some of which have since closed. The organizers saw working together to organize an event for citizens to discover and discuss local history as a way to help create the public space necessary for the community to make decisions together.

"Imagining Collinsville" was co-sponsored by the Collinsville Public Library, the Collinsville Historical Association, the Caroline Marshall Draughton Center for the Arts & Humanities at Auburn University, and the David Mathews Center for Civic Life. While the formal collaboration that produced the program has ended, conversations are ongoing about holding a second year of public forums around an important issue requiring community action.

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