Project Planning and Timeline

All of the partners who are working on “The Young Lords in Lincoln Park” project take seriously their responsibility to preserve and make the material collected as a result of this project as widely accessible as possible so that this valuable history can be used by the communities that generated it, as well as by students, researchers, teachers, organizers, and others around the globe. We are grateful to the individuals and communities that have contributed to this initiative by sharing of their memories, photographs, documents, and their time. Without their generosity, this project would not be possible.

 

Phase One: September 2011-September 2012

The “Young Lords in Lincoln Park” project was formally started at GVSU in September 2011.  Through its first year, the project partners focused their work in several areas, including project planning, identifying initial funding and institutional partners, and collecting oral histories from the founders of the Young Lords Movement and others knowledgeable about the Movement’s origins. 

During this time, nearly 100 video and/or audiotaped oral histories were collected, using current best practices for archival quality, digital audio and video recording. Most of these interviews were conducted with individuals in metropolitan Chicago, Illinois, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Puerto Rico. In this initial phase we were also able to catch up with some members of Young Lords from New York and Milwaukee and intend to do more and to include other cities. Individuals who participated in the oral histories were also asked if they would be willing to donate copies of photographs, documents, clippings, or other physical ephemera to further enhance the project and the historical record it is creating. All of these materials are housed in the GVSU Special Collections. Support from the Office of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship, including a Student Summer Scholars award during Summer 2012, helped significantly with this work.

Phase Two: September 2012-December 2013

The second phase of the project will focus on the following areas:

  • Digitizing, preserving, and bringing online the oral histories and related materials that were collected as part of Phase One;
  • Creating and launching a gateway website to facilitate access to and about the “Young Lords in Lincoln Park” project and collections. That website will launch on September 23, 2012, the 44th anniversary of the founding of the Young Lords Movement;
  • Beginning to transcribe the more than 100 oral histories collected as part of Phase One and also starting to translate these materials so that they will be available in both Spanish and English;
  • Building a team of undergraduate students, faculty, and staff to provide critical research opportunities, mentoring, teaching, and learning opportunities over a multi-year span;
  • Starting to process, preserve, and digitize the papers, photographs, and related ephemera that has been donated by project participants and interviewees;
  • Disseminating information about the project and findings from the project through public talks, conferences, and publications;
  • Working with the GVSU Libraries to create a short, documentary film drawing from these materials and collections.

Collection of oral histories will be ongoing throughout the life of the project. We encourage anyone who is interested in sharing their memories, donating materials to the project collections, or who would like to learn more about this effort to please contact us at ours@gvsu.edu or via phone at (616)331-8100.

Page last modified September 26, 2012