We Aim To:

● (Re)Cover: Empower descendants to be part of the further and professional recovery of their ancestors’ stories by actively buttressing and offering resources to support: 1) didactic guidance in accessing brick and mortar archives, historical sites, digital collections, 2) engaged training in conducting historical research as well as 3) an approachable and substantial grounding in historical and historiographical understanding.

● (Re)Claim: Collaborate with descendants in developing instructions and practices on how best to process, consider, and curate archival research, (primary sources and other artifacts) into living and ongoing oral and written histories, exhibitions, and preservation projects (inclusive of professional publications) to reclaim, maintain, and protect their history, culture, historical sites on their own terms and volition. Reclaiming in this context helps descendants fight the perpetuation of academic and public exploitation of their stories or their ancestor’s experiences, lives, and deaths, and ensures the lens this history is told from creates a more equitable access to resources –where descendants always remain central.

● (Re)Connect: Help bridge long disconnected stories of the African Diaspora in the Americas, importantly those that help reconnect long undertold freedom stories, and histories of Black movement and migration that link the United States and México. This template for dispossessed and marginalized communities in both the United States and in Mexico enables descendants to (Re)Connect with family and stories across various geographies. The divide we see in our time draws parallels to the immigration crisis we see today, and reconnecting people, places and spaces will allow for a better understanding of not only our shared pasts, but our shared futures.

● (Re)Define what inclusion means and looks like. Redefining what inclusion looks like is imperative to bringing change to how history is told. It also brings awareness to why and how historical lenses matter and shape perspectives that directly affect our world and society. What histories are privileged, what historical actors are highlighted and how Black, Brown and Indigenous historical actors are portrayed matter to better comprehending and reshaping how we utilize buttress inclusion at the core. During this turbulent time when museums, universities, and archives are having their funding cut and experiencing an ongoing decline in support from their communities, this will bolster not only their audience number and reach but also show that support for uncensored and non-whitewashed history is today extremely timely and necessary. The defunding of the humanities, libraries, museums, and organizations by federal agencies aims to create a system that conforms (unintentionally at best or intentionally at worst) to racist, unethical processes that will not prompt challenges to anti-Blackness. ReDefining inclusion through collective projects designed to work with and access descendant communities will enable those institutions to see that they do not need to relent to the pressures that are currently marking our present. Strength is found not only in numbers, but in inclusion and collaboration.