The Northside Digital Commons

FAIN: HAA-261291-18

Marian Cheek Jackson Center for Saving and Making History (Chapel Hill, NC 27516-2303)
Della Pollock (Project Director: January 2018 to March 2024)

The development and documentation of a digital community archiving project focusing on the Northside community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The Northside Digital Commons is a new initiative in community archiving. It goes well beyond preservation to engage users in both saving and making history. Our primary goal is to provide a virtual space through which historically black communities facing economic displacement and generational discontinuity can continue to grow and prosper. The proposed project uses innovations in digital historiography to mobilize a professionally curated body of oral histories and artifacts for community renewal and national reckoning. It focuses on the Northside community in Chapel Hill, which emerged as a segregated labor settlement serving the University, and will model possibilities for similarly endangered communities across the nation. Primary activities include web development, resource supplementation, guidance by a Community Review Board, integration into an existing k-12 curriculum, a large-scale launch event, and ongoing evaluation and revision.