ABOUT

The Black Washtenaw County Collaboratory brings together local historians, community organizers, and cultural institutions with an interdisciplinary team of faculty, staff, graduate students and undergraduates at the University of Michigan. Specifically, the Collaboratory documents, analyzes and publicizes the intersecting histories of African American community building and racial segregation in Washtenaw County during the 19th through the early 21st centuries. This public history research project has two aims. First, we document the role of policy-making, public discourse, the built environment and community organizing in the persistence of residential segregation and racial disparities in economic status, education, housing, and health. Second, we build on and extend the work of community historians to document the ways in which Black communities within the county responded to and challenged racial segregation and disparities.

Mission & Purpose

We believe that greater knowledge of the history of anti-Black racism in Washtenaw County and of Black communities’ resistance to it in Washtenaw County is essential to combat injustice in the present and to imagine and support better futures for all.

Amplify and contribute to storytelling about the history of Black communities, political organizing, and persistent racial inequity in Washtenaw County.
Create a digital archive and publicize existing archives that can be used by others for transformative projects in Washtenaw County and beyond.
Create spaces of connection for diverse groups of individuals, organizations and institutions to share knowledge and learn about race and racial inequality in Washtenaw County and beyond.
Support greater accessibility to new and existing documentation about the history of Washtenaw County, with a focus on Black Communal Knowledge, Black Artistic Creation, and racial inequality in the built environment.
Support multimedia representations in a variety of media of local histories that can inspire and inform.
Curate artistic interventions in community spaces, as a model for community arts projects in present and future
Offer guides and training for individuals and groups to learn from and contribute to local histories by compiling oral histories, contributing to or creating archival collections, or other means.
Create manuals and references for collaborative projects that cross academic/ community divides.

Our Vision Statement

June 25, 2022 Visioning Retreat Illustration by Y. Azzaro

The Working Groups

Archives & Oral Histories

We document and share stories of Black families and communities throughout Washtenaw County, including histories of Black community-building in the face of ongoing racial discrimination, segregation and structural racism. We also seek to promote awareness of the wealth of publicly-available archives on the county’s rich Black past.

Justice InDeed

We expose the truth that the thousands of homes in Washtenaw County have deeds prohibiting Black people and other people of color from living there; we create maps showing which homes in Washtenaw County have racially restrictive covenants; we educate the public and policymakers about how racially restrictive covenants and other racist housing practices are responsible for housing segregation today; we work with neighborhoods and homeowners to repeal racially restrictive covenants and replace them with covenants prohibiting discrimination; and we encourage the adoption of housing policies to repair the damage done by racially restrictive covenants and other racist housing practices.

Curriculum & Community Engagement

We guide and embrace new models of “engagement” that center Black people and communities and operate in trust cooperation and service to and with them. We do this by making authentic connections knowing that doing so moves all of us towards a co-liberated future. We partner with other Working Groups in this collective to bring robust stories, narratives, research and data forward that will expand curriculum and contribute to the truth of Washtenaw County’s racist history while shaping a future narrative that reckons, remembers and reimagines our histories and futures.

Race in Arts & the Built Environment

We hope to add to general and specialist knowledge about the growth of arts and the built environment in Black communities in Washtenaw County. We would like to contribute to knowledge about this community since WWII, and possibly longer, with a focus on the influence of arts and the built environment. We developed the BWC’s culminating exhibit, Family Foundations: Four Stories of Black Washtenaw County Community Building, 1850 to 1950.

Visual Identity Design

We gather and present the work of BWC in an organized and comprehensive manner both for our internal members but also to the public interested in the work we do. The externally-facing website will serve as a living archive of the work that the BWC is doing, making our work accessible through different forms of information-delivery; identifying creative ways to “converse” without depending solely on the written word by using digital and visual tools to project, convey, and imagine the future we want for Washtenaw County.