BMRC Community Symposium 3/13/2024
February 27, 2024
Join us on March 13, 2024, as BMRC members and affiliates discuss their latest work to document Black experiences in Chicago.
Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, JRL 122
11:30 to 2:00 pm
Free and Open to the Public - To attend virtually, register here.
FULL PROGRAM (PDF)
(JUST ANNOUNCED!) KEYNOTE:
"Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife”
Dr. Tonia Sutherland, Associate Professor of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles
BMRC MEMBERS AND AFFILIATES PRESENTERS
“A Movie Camera in Bronzeville: The “Newsreel-ettes” of the Ramon Williams Collection”
Saroop Singh, Assistant Director, South Side Home Movie Project
The South Side Home Movie Project collects, preserves, digitizes, researches, and exhibits home movies shot by residents of Chicago’s South Side. Though each collection is unique, most films are made by hobbyists documenting their family life. While these collections offer rare and intimate footage of mid-20th century everyday life in Chicago’s South Side, rarely does the home movie maker’s gaze leave the subject of the family to depict the world around them. The Ramon Williams Collection, a recent donation of 16mm reels, and our single largest collection to date (over 300 reels), is an exception to that rule.
Ramon Williams, ACL, a black IBEW electrician and film hobbyist, was an early adopter of amateur filmmaking and invested in documenting the Bronzeville community in which he lived. The collection represents a never-before-seen visual record at the time when the historic Black neighborhood’s most famous residents included Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, Nat King Cole, and Joe Louis. Authored by one of its few citizens with a movie camera, the “newsreel-ette” films feature a number of historical figures and events, including footage of local, national, and international black dignitaries, athletes, performers, businesspersons, and civic leaders. We will provide live narration when we share these silent reels to properly contextualize the films and the filmmaker during the 1940s-1960s.
SSHMP_Williams Collection_ Bud_Billiken Parade
“The Chicago Covenants Project: Identifying Mechanisms of Racist Exclusion”
Maura Fennelly, Chicago Research Director for the Chicago Covenants Project, PhD Candidate,
Northwestern University
Text of a Racial Covenant
“Rebuilding a Black Information Mecca: Preserving Black heritage through the restoration of the Johnson Publishing Company Library"
Heather Hummons, MS, MLIS, Special Collection Librarian, Rebuild Foundation at the Stony Island Arts Bank and Karl Bullock, MS, PhD Student, Northwestern University, BMRC / BMGA Fellow, 2023-2024
Johnson Publishing Company Library at REBUILD