Thread by @amplify285

Excited for the opportunity to witness this deeply grounded and pathseeking #digitalhumanities collab between MITH, @umd_amst, and some of the keepers of Lakeland’s legacy.

This is the kind of project that illuminates possibilities for #BlackDH and community generated research.

https://twitter.com/UMD_MITH/status/1377262164508049418

As if this weren’t enough, you can follow this convo with a dive into some of the larger structural matters underlying Lakeland’s historical and contemporary claims. Which is to say, you should catch this convo on reparations and anti-Black racism...

https://twitter.com/UMD_CRI/status/1380176009237032960

The program is opening with Ms. Violetta Sharp, who is fifth generation Lakeland. She describes Lakeland as a vacation community founded in the nineteenth century, sited in what eventually became the larger College Park area. Black families were attracted to the area + work opps

Ms. Sharp is highlighting the importance of this digital archive creation work of recovering the memory & history of what was lost in the urban renewal period. Lakeland was the center of Black life along the rt 1 corridor. Image captures the pain of what was razed and removed.

Project lead Ms. Maxine Gross notes that capturing the Lakeland story is critical for families and local arrivants. This history is everywhere; they want to make sure people know. Last year, city of College Park formally apologized for harm caused. vimeo.com/467789439

Indeed, Mary Sies of @umd_amst highlights difficulty of bringing students to Lakeland sites, for instance literal and figurative excavation of sites that had been emptied out by urban renewal, but of which there was thankfully still so much local memory held by community members.

.@trevormunoz of @UMD_MITH & @umd_AADHum emphasizes organic ways this grew into a digital project. Ms. Gross emphasizes lateral nature of the collaboration; the community leads the process. Notes the rarity, esp. viz. histories of large institutional interest in local communities

Mary Sies also notes the ways the Lakeland collab works to defuse the potential power differential, centering the community’s choices, and also emphasizing the long arc of engagement over the years. Both Sies and @trevormunoz note the danger of integrating tech work too quickly.

Note that if you are interested in this history (of course you are!), you can pick up this excellent book produced by Lakeland about Lakeland. amazon.com/Lakeland-Afric…

Intriguing audience question re if project team has shared this model for institutional DH + classroom + community project. Sies notes that @UMD_MITH & @umd_amst build the ethos into their community-based practice + DH classes, but also that this work is ongoing and the priority.

We should also highlight how the Lakeland project has always embraced multimodal and multimedia approaches to learning about its own people and sharing out its story. Not only the book, video, and coming digital archive, but also performances such as this.

Sies and @trevormunoz note how the technical project’s sustainability is embedded in sustaining the project’s people, its base in the community. Keeping infrastructure and its dev in the domain of the community. Gross notes that an institution can archive iterations, for instance

I don’t know about you, but I already can say that I’ve had an amazing morning. Grateful for this world I’ve joined, the orbit in which @umd_AADHum and @UMD_MITH operate. This is hard work, a vision of #BlackDH as operationalized in community and collaboration. Bravo Lakeland!