Collaboration and Community Engagement
The BMRC was founded on collaboration and partnerships between the academy and community institutions and researchers and archivists. Through the Survey Initiative and the Color Curtain Processing Project, the BMRC established connections with community- based archives and a wider range of individuals committed to the preservation of Black historical collections. Our Fellows program is also open to academic researchers as well as public scholars, artists and professionals often seeking to amplify community histories.
A core requirement of Full and Associate level membership in the BMRC is that an institution must have archives that are freely accessible to the public. The BMRC’s Annual Meetings and Fellow presentations are also open to the community. The BMRC receives and responds to research inquiries from high school students in search of topics and sources on Black history for history fair projects, undergraduate students seeking primary sources for a college assignment and advanced researchers working on publications.
Providing legacy management resources for holders of Black historical collections is a component of the BMRC’s 2018-2021 Strategic Plan and a significant focus of a multiyear grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In addition to consortial activities, the BMRC supports the programs and initiatives of our individual member institutions to promote broad community engagement with Black historical collections. The consortium also collaborates with local and national partners who share aspects of the BMRC’s mission.
Courtesy of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium
The BMRC partners with the Chicago Collections Consortium annually on a public program that engages aspects of archival and Chicago history, often with a focus on race, social justice and the importance of Chicago-centric collections. The Chicago Collections Consortium is a membership organization composed of not-for-profit institutions with collections that chronicle the rich history of Chicago.
Courtesy of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium
The HistoryMakers, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, UChicago Engages and the BMRC partnered on a half-day symposium to help provide crucial services for potential donors and holders of Black historical collections in Chicago. The day’s programming consisted of keynotes by HistoryMakers founder, Julieanna Richardson on the impetus for the symposium and Dr. Miriam Petty, an Associate Professor at Northwestern University who spoke to the importance of archived legacies for scholarly research. Other sessions included a panel of legacy holders who donated their Black historical collections to repositories and a panel of BMRC representatives who discussed the various ways in which donated Black collections have been activated. The symposium ended with an opportunity for community members to meet and ask questions of archivists, librarians and curators from BMRC member institutions.
Courtesy of The Newberry Library
“Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots,” was a year-long series of public conversations initiated by the Newberry Library to collectively remember and engage the legacy of the riots which were sparked when an African American teenager, Eugene Williams, drowned after being hit with a rock by a white assailant who claimed Williams crossed an invisible line of segregation in Lake Michigan near the 29th Street Beach. Thirteen organizations, including the BMRC joined the Newberry Library as Chicago 1919 Project Partners. Over 2,700 Chicagoans took part in the Chicago 1919 discussions. Artist and professor, Anya Davidson created comics depicting each public event in the series and compiled them into this graphic novel. The Newberry received the 2020 Outstanding Public History Project Award from the National Council on Public History for the “Chicago 1919” project.
Courtesy of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium
The Robert F. Smith Fund’s Community Curation Program, a division of the Smithsonian National Musuem of African American History and Culture seeks to preserve community and family histories through digital preservation, curation and educational public programming. In 2018 and 2019, four BMRC member institutions worked with Community Curation team to plan Community Curation in Chicago. The BMRC member institutions were represented by BMRC Board members: Raquel Flores-Clemons (Chicago State University), Tracy Drake with assistance from Beth Loch (Harsh Collection, Chicago Public Library) Skyla Hearn (then at the DuSable Museum) and Dino Robinson (Shorefront Legacy Center).
Courtesy of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium
In addition to opportunities to have their legacy materials digitized at BMRC member institutions and workshops on preserving family and community history, Community Curation in Chicago included screenings and film discussions where the public could engage Chicago’s Black History. In a film screening hosted at Chicago State University’sGwendolyn Brooks Library, Dr. Thabiti Lewis, 2019 BMRC Fellow, unveiled his documentary film on the Black Arts Movement in Chicago which featured the institutions, artists, writers and publishers who sustained the movement.
Courtesy of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium
A multiyear grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funds the BMRC’s latest initiative, “Documenting Black Chicago Through Technology, Sustainability and Outreach.” A major component of the initiative includes updating the BMRC’s searchable database into a modern portal for Black studies research. The other major component of the grant project entails building a Legacy Management Resource Portal to provide education for donors seeking archival homes for their collections as well as resources for individuals and organizations who wish to properly care for their own collections. The resource portal, created by the BMRC’s Community Engagement Archivist Tanya Calvin, is available as an online resource on the BMRC’s website.
Courtesy of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium
