“I, Too, Have a Voice”: Authentic Stories from the Brown v. Board Experience in Topeka, Kansas

Topeka has a wealth of citizens who can recall the impact of the Brown v. Board decision on their lives and within the Topeka community before and after the historic decision.

An Era of Rights: Kansas City’s Struggle for Equality, 1950-1980

We are beginning a digital history project that will document and analyze the major events and themes of the Civil Rights struggle in Kansas City.

beautiful ashe: memoirs of a sweet black boy & other poems

This audiobook project will make available a poetic memoir that speaks to the difficulties of growing up as a Black male on the East Coast of the United States. It addresses the homophobia, sexism, and classism that runs rampant in this country in brutal and vulnerable realism. This poetry is meant to bolster the resolve to continue towards (r)evolution, and addresses the contradictions and counterrevolutionary aspects of the self.

Bench by the Road Stories: The Stories of the Bench by the Road Project

The Toni Morrison Society’s Bench by the Road Project has placed benches and accompanying plaques at 32 sites around the world memorializing people and events from African American and African diasporic history.  The Society plans to create a digital archive documenting the histories of each of these sites, including audio and video recordings with individuals in the communities where each Bench was placed.

BLINK!

This documentary storytelling project shows how classical music in urban communities inspires intuitive movement and value. It describes how classical music creates instantaneously powerful movements and leaders through interdisciplinary dialogue around the arts, history and sciences. Interviews and storytelling will illustrate the influence of classical music and fine arts upon past, present and modern movements.

Building Black Kansas City

Building Black Kansas City is an oral history project focusing on the African American experience in Kansas City, MO in the mid twentieth century, beginning at the end of World War II. These stories will chronicle the building of Black Kansas City through varying aspects of its culture, collecting and making accessible the voices of individuals who might not otherwise have an opportunity to share their personal stories from a bygone era.

Coming to the Heartland

Focusing on the diversity, adversity, and struggles of Latin American and African immigrants in the Heartland, this initiative asks how the new digital age affects the stories that immigrants tell, as well as the possibilities for their visibility in the wider community.

Dockum Drug Store Sit-In Virtual Reality Project

On July 19, 1958, a group of Wichita students began a movement, the Dockum Drug Store Sit-In, that would become a critical moment in the history of ending segregation. The student activists exhibited the attributes, characteristics, and skills of emerging leaders. Through their planning, preparation, organization, commitment, respect, and dedication, they effected change during a very volatile time.

Emmett Till Memory Project

Twenty-first century attempts to commemorate the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till have been met with persistent vandalism. Born in direct response to that vandalism, the Emmett Till Memory Project is a website and mobile application that preserves the sites and stories of the Till lynching. The ETMP uses GPS technology to take users to the most important sites in the Till story.

History of Black Writing (HBW)

Since its establishment in 1983, the History of Black Writing (HBW) has committed to literary recovery work and public programming.

Kansas City’s Culturally Diverse Communities and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Oral Histories

This project will result in 25 oral history interviews documenting the historical lived experiences and perceptions of the museum among multiple Kansas City communities. This work is especially relevant and timely as the museum begins to think about how it will celebrate its centennial in 2033, a time that will bring greater focus on and interest in the institution’s history.

Negro League Video Shorts

Storytelling has long played an important role in filling the void of Black history which is often excluded from the pages of American History books. With funding from The Andrew W.  Mellon foundation, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) will create biographical video segments on legendary Negro League players, teams, and key moments in Black Baseball history.

Police Brutality Song

This music video will tell regional stories of police brutality. The song describes the beautiful life and dreams of a young Black man whose life is taken too soon by police in his neighborhood. It speaks to the resilience, fear, and loss deeply felt by Black people each time a new hashtag is birthed. The content is gentle and sensitive, so that audiences of various ages (3rd grade and up) have enjoyed and understood it.

Stories of African-American Life in Lawrence

This project will collect stories from local black families about the racial history of Lawrence, KS. In recent years, the local NAACP chapter has worked with the city and the Equal Justice Initiative to bring high-profile moments of local racism to light. But for every moment of high-profile racism, there are dozens of untold stories of the black experience.

The Jurisprudence and Child Privacy Praxis of Black and Native-American Home Education

The tradition of Black home education dates back to 1787, when Prince Hall petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature for a “Free Africa” school for the children of free Black families. Although Massachusetts was the first state to recognize a universal right of education and the state did not require segregation, the damaging and discriminatory treatment Black children experienced, compelled Black parents to seek separate schools.

Trading Fours: An Oral Exchange on Jazz Musical Influence and Biography

The American Jazz Museum’s permanent exhibition features four prominent icons, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. Each of these icons center jazz as an American experience born of creativity, innovation, and black culture.

Untold Stories: Former Enslaved Americans Who Sought Freedom in Lawrence, KS

“Untold Stories: Former Enslaved Americans Who Sought Freedom in Lawrence, KS” shines a light on explores the often-overlooked reality of life for the previously enslaved, who continued to struggle to achieve equality long after the war.

Voices of the Displaced

Gentrification, the calculated reclamation of black urban spaces for financially affluent new homeowners, is spreading through black communities across America. After years of economic oppression and deprivation, the black community now stands at the edge of perhaps the greatest community dispersal in its history.