Everyday Experience: African Americans in Indianapolis

FAIN: PY-258627-18

Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library Foundation (Indianapolis, IN 46208-5732)
Meaghan Fukunaga (Project Director: May 2017 to March 2021)

Three digitization events at the Indianapolis Public Library focused on preserving local history materials. Follow-up public outreach events would focus on the area’s African American community, which represents over a quarter of the city’s population, and would highlight such topics as jazz, Negro League baseball, and land ownership. The events would encourage digitization of photographs, family and church records, personal letters, and other documents, with the possibility of digitizing audiovisual materials separately. With donor permission, digitized materials would be made available via Digital Indy, the library’s digital collections and exhibition site.

Everyday Experience: African Americans in Indianapolis will provide opportunities for the digitization of family heritage materials from Indianapolis’ African Americans, while also presenting engaging public programming to both educate and celebrate that heritage with the wider community. The Indianapolis Public Library will hold at least three public scan-a-thons to create a new digital collection focused on the African-American experience. Based on the items digitized, the Library will also host public programming to explore and provide context for the materials collected. Programming topics could include Negro League Baseball, Jazz on Indiana Avenue or an exploration of neighborhood segregation. With the correct permissions, the digitized materials will become part of the Library’s digital collections, available to the public, researchers and more. The project dovetails with the Library’s digitization efforts and creation of a Center for Black Literature and Culture.

Associated Products

Black History, Indianapolis History (Web Resource)
Title: Black History, Indianapolis History
Author: Meaghan Fukunaga
Abstract: Black history has a long presence in Indianapolis, and makes up the very fabric of the city. Six years after the founding of Indianapolis, out of the 1,066 total residents 55 were African American (source). There is no history of Indianapolis without Indianapolis’ vibrant and diverse Black population. The Black History, Indianapolis History digital archive owes its existence to the dedication of the Indianapolis community to preserve and share family history. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) between 2018 and 2019, seven community cultural heritage preservation events were held at Indianapolis Public Library branches around the city. These Scan-A-Thons invited community members to bring family photos and memorabilia to be scanned, recorded, and made publicly available in the Black History, Indianapolis History digital archive by Indianapolis Public Library staff.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: http://www.digitalindy.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/bhih

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