“This program has given us the time and resources to capture a slice of our organization’s long and unique history and to explore some processes for further documentation of our alumni community’s experiences.”

“As someone with no prior experience in public history, participating in the group learning sessions gave me the confidence to tackle this project.”

“We learned a lot about the concept of community history in that it is not the same as “Capital H” history, but rather it’s more about storytelling and community engagement.”

“Community learning sessions offered opportunities to exchange knowledge, ideas, and experiences with participants. This knowledge will guide us in developing effective strategies, avoiding common pitfalls, and maximizing impact.”

“We gained information on technical aspects of the work we seek to develop, such as recording equipment, microphones, file types, software and methods to use for recording and maintaining the material in digital form.” 

“Our organization intends to continue finding ways to teach our youth about community history and devise more projects for our youth to engage with their communities and the history that surrounds them.”

“The Stakeholder Mapping process helped us to identify local stakeholders who we had not partnered with before and broaden our communication plan for our community history project.”

“The learning sessions greatly enhanced our ability to challenge the hierarchy of who gets to write history.”

“We are so grateful for the opportunity and the experience to work with a cohort of non-profits with different missions. We learned from them and the importance of learning how to get your organization’s mission into the minds and hearts of their respective communities.”

Quote in response to a question about why some African Americans are moving from the north to the south:“I think for some people, life is excellent [here], but for other African Americans, they’re still struggling…Where there was supposed to be opportunities up north, but they were fake opportunities. You got true opportunities down south [now].”