How do we take this information on Morrissania in the Bronx, "common knowledge" to Morrissania residents, but never captured or discussed in any work of history, and make sure it is not lost to future generations? Here, the role of university trained scholars and heads of cultural institutions has been crucial. While the research team at Fordham has concentrated on conducting and transcribing interviews, collecting supporting documents, and writing articles about our research, the Bronx County Historical Society has taken responsibility for housing and cataloguing the Oral History Collection, preserving and organizing new documents, and publishing what we write about the project in its journal. In addition, both organizations, and the Community Research Team, have worked together in organizing tours, sponsoring lectures, concerts, and media broadcasts, and developing programs in the public schools. As a result of our collective effort, we have created a database of more than one hundred transcribed interviews, acquired two major documentary collections (one on black politics, the other on jazz and latin music) created an excellent interactive website at http://www.fordham.edu/baahp, and put Bronx African American History "on the map" in local broadcast media and the local educational system.

Working together, professional historians and history-minded local leaders, have created a research project which has captured the imagination of a neglected section of the New York’s black population, and made thousands of people excited about recording and preserving their own history. In the process, our collective understanding of how people live "race" in New York City has been dramatically deepened and enhanced.

From the OAH Newsletter, 33(August 2005). Copyright, Organization of American Historians

Mark Naison is Professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University. For more information about the Bronx African American History Project, you may contact Naison at naison@fordham.edu.