Baltimore: Digital Archive of Freddie Gray Protests/Baltimore Uprising Launches Online

From the Maryland Historical Society:

Maryland Historical Society announces the launch of a website [Baltimore Uprising 2015 Archive Project] containing thousands of images documenting the unrest and cleanup efforts in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death.
More than 12,000 images were submitted, including photographs taken from cell phones and cameras, audio segments, oral histories, and more than 2,000 intergovernmental emails surrounding the unrest that were released by Baltimore City. The images depict activists, demonstrations, the presence of the National Guard, police officers, military hardware, and more.
“There’s a lot of material on the Internet, but no guarantee that those locations will exist indefinitely, says Denise Meringolo, Associate Professor of Public History at UMBC, “It’s important to ask people to think about what will survive into the future, and what organizations will survive. It was fantastic to have the Maryland Historical Society say ‘let’s partner here,’ to make sure those voices survive regardless what happens to Youtube or Twitter.”

From the Christian Science Monitor:

The website’s launch mirrors a growing trend of pushing for a re-examination of historical events around America’s history with race and racism, including an exhibit launched by Princeton University that reconsiders the legacy of Woodrow Wilson in terms of views on race and a move by several universities to acknowledge their ties to slavery.
But the inclusion of a variety of citizen voices in the historical society’s online archive has been notably enhanced by the growing use of technology to document events – including unfolding protests – as they occur, often creating a parallel narrative to the one generated by mainstream media outlets.

Read the Complete Article
Direct to Baltimore Uprising 2015 Archive Project

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Digital Collections, Digital Preservation, News, Video Recordings