CLEVELAND, Ohio – East Mount Zion Baptist Church has collected the stories of African Americans who visited the Cleveland area during the Great Migration in a purpose-built museum to ensure they are remembered by time.
Now, Cleveland is taking another step toward preserving its African American history.
Cleveland is your next destination Important efforts to digitize and organize African American historya national program supported by the Smithsonian Institution and several other groups that want to close the generational digital divide in cities across the country.
The journey began Saturday at East Mount Zion Baptist Church, where several hundred people attended the meeting. “Community Curation Summit”. Community members and leaders attended the summit to work together to preserve their stories and learn more about keeping memories and family heirlooms alive.
The summit was sponsored by the Church with support from the Western Reserve Historical Society, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Smithsonian Institution, the Robert F. Smith Center for Digitization and Curation of African American History, and the Rashad Center. It was sponsored. , Ltd. etc. Panelists at this event focused on the goals of digitizing and curation of African American history.
There will be many performances at the summit, and many speakers will be at the event, including Dr. Doretha Williams from the Center for African American History Digitization and Curation (Smith Center), the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian Institution. attended. Angela Winand, Administrator, Community Curation Program, Robert F. Smith National Museum of African American History and Culture and Smithsonian Institution;
The panel discussion included Rev. Marvin McMickle, Rev. Heather Barton, Senior Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Cohen, and Dr. Vatraisha Nyemba.
Tracy Jackson, a spokeswoman for the Smithsonian, said before the summit that the institution has already visited other diverse communities, including Chicago and Nashville, to help digitize, preserve and preserve heirlooms and history. Ta. Four representatives from the Smithsonian Institution have been in Cleveland since the beginning of this week, visiting various facilities including the Cleveland Museum of Art, Severance Hall, Cleveland State University, and Oberlin College, where archives and historical data are housed, as well as digital I am visiting places that are in the process of being transformed. history.
“Cleveland has been selected as the next city to go through this process,” Jackson said. “Cleveland would be honored to be considered for this.”
Saturday’s event also featured performances, a variety of panel speakers, and breakout sessions to foster collaboration among attendees.
Jackson said Saturday’s event was the beginning of the project. Cleveland residents are beginning to think about how they can preserve their memories and how the Cleveland community can collaborate with each other and the Smithsonian Institution.
“Now that we have the resources and the support of the Smithsonian Institution, how do we empower each other to take on this project, work together to bring it to fruition, and spend the next five months going out there and making our How can I help the community?’ I know what’s going on,” Jackson said.
Much of African American history remains untold, Pastor Brian Cash of East Mount Zion Baptist Church said in an interview with cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer before the summit. This initiative will ensure that history and culture will be available for generations to come through the digitization and curation process that the Smithsonian Institution offers to cities across the country.
“African American families have contributed to America in so many ways, but these stories are never told because they don’t know how to tell their stories,” he said. “So the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., said, ‘We have a huge museum in Washington, D.C., that talks about broader African American history, but there’s so much history that we still haven’t talked about. It has not been done.”
Because of this historical gap, Robert Smith of the Robert F. Smith Center for the Digitization and Curation of African American History has provided funding to the Smithsonian Institution to help curators travel across the country. “To go to an area that is very different from what we’re used to,” he said. “There are people who are trying to bring history together, to cultivate history, to do storytelling, but they don’t have the money or the skills to bring the stories to life and tell those stories strategically.” Cash said.
“Cleveland is one of those cities,” he says. “In Cleveland, you hear a lot about Martin King, Carl and Lewis Stokes, Fannie Lewis, Stephanie Tubbs (Jones).”
Their story is not well known, he says.
“And these families have had these stories for generations, but they weren’t curated in the right way,” Cash said.
It is especially special that the summit was held at East Mount Zion Baptist Church. Because the Greenstone Project helped digitize, organize, and bring the original conversation about African American history back to the forefront. The Greenstone Project or “Green Stone Church” comes from the exterior color of East Mount Zion Baptist Church.. He is one of the only serpentine stone buildings in Ohio.
In a livestream of Saturday’s summit event, Cash said the church-owned museum is researching African-Americans who visited the Cleveland area during the Great Migration.
“Our museums highlight those stories because so many African American stories are dying and their stories are going to the grave,” he said. “We said we wanted to curate those stories, and we’re so grateful to be able to have a museum that focuses on those stories.”
Kaylee Remington is a commercial and metro reporter for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.read her work online.