Our Work
The Black Massacre Project’s work spans three interconnected areas: building and preserving the historical record, bringing that history into public life, and examining the lasting consequences of racial violence and what meaningful accountability and repair require.
Research & Preservation
We uncover, document, and preserve the history of Black massacres and racial terror.
We build and protect the historical record through original research, archival recovery, documentation, oral and descendant histories, preservation, and scholarship.
Digital Compendium
The Digital Compendium is The Black Massacre Project’s massacre-by-massacre research and documentation repository. It brings together original research, timelines, primary and secondary sources, biographies, maps, reports, photographs, descendant information, archival materials, and other historical records for each documented event.
Oral & Descendant Histories
The Black Massacre Project preserves family histories, descendant narratives, community memory, and knowledge that often exists beyond traditional archival collections. This work helps ensure that descendants and affected communities remain part of how these histories are documented, interpreted, and preserved.
Original Research & Scholarship
The Black Massacre Project produces original research on individual massacres and examines patterns across events through research reports, working papers, case studies, datasets, and other scholarly resources.
Our research is strengthened through collaboration with universities, libraries, archives, historical societies, scholars, descendants, and communities connected to this history.
Public History & Storytelling
We bring the history into public life through compelling scholarship, interpretation, storytelling, and cultural experiences.
Our public history work transforms research into exhibitions, publications, conversations, audio and visual storytelling, educational resources, and other experiences that allow people to encounter, understand, and engage with the history of Black massacres and racial terror.
Aftermath: The Unfinished Consequences of American Racial Violence
Aftermath is The Black Massacre Project’s upcoming exhibition initiative examining what happened after racial violence ended. Through archival materials, historical research, audio, visual storytelling, and immersive interpretation, Aftermath explores displacement, property and wealth loss, disrupted communities, political consequences, memory, and the continuing effects of racial violence.
Black Massacre Press
Black Massacre Press is the publishing arm of The Black Massacre Project, dedicated to recovering important historical works and producing new scholarship related to Black massacres, racial terror, and their consequences.
The Press publishes and develops critical editions of historical books and documents, documentary readers, original scholarship, educational materials, audiobooks, and other works that expand access to this history.
Podcast & Audio Storytelling
The Black Massacre Project’s long-form audio storytelling work explores individual Black massacres, the forces that shaped them, their consequences, and the people and communities working to preserve their history and advance repair.
Public Programs & Convenings
The Black Massacre Project produces lectures, panel discussions, conversations, symposia, screenings, book talks, author conversations, conferences, and other public programs that bring historical research into conversation with contemporary questions of history, memory, justice, and repair.
Inheritance Interrupted: Black Massacres and the Economics of Violence is one example of this work.
Digital Storytelling & Media
The Black Massacre Project uses digital and visual storytelling to bring historical research to wider audiences through social media, short-form video, digital historical features, interactive content, documentary projects, and other multimedia experiences.
From the Archive
From the Archive highlights historical materials uncovered through The Black Massacre Project’s research. Photographs, newspaper accounts, maps, government records, testimony, letters, and other archival sources are accompanied by context explaining what they reveal and why they matter.
Legacy, Consequences & Repair
We trace the long-term consequences of racial violence and explore what meaningful accountability, redress, and repair require.
This work examines the economic, legal, political, social, cultural, and intergenerational consequences of racial violence, including its effects on wealth, property, political power, family and community stability, health and well-being, memory, and opportunity. It also examines accountability, reparations, restitution, remembrance, and other forms of redress and repair.
Inheritance Interrupted: Black Massacres and the Economics of Violence
Inheritance Interrupted is The Black Massacre Project’s signature program series examining how racial violence disrupted Black wealth, property, inheritance, political power, family stability, and community development across generations. The program brings together research, public conversation, and interdisciplinary expertise to examine the economic consequences of racial violence and the ways those consequences continue to shape Black families and communities.
Legacy & Impact Research
The Black Massacre Project researches the long-term effects of massacres and racial terror, including wealth and property loss, displacement, political disenfranchisement, community disruption, health and well-being, and intergenerational consequences.
Descendant Engagement
The Black Massacre Project works with descendants and affected communities to document lived consequences, preserve family and community knowledge, and deepen understanding of how racial violence continues to shape families and communities across generations.
Accountability & Repair
The Black Massacre Project conducts research, public programs, and policy-oriented work focused on reparations, restitution, remembrance, accountability, and other forms of redress and repair.
This work includes convenings that bring together scholars, lawyers, advocates, historians, policymakers, descendants, and community leaders to examine the legal, historical, and policy questions surrounding repair.
In 2022, The Black Massacre Project convened Race, Riots, & Reparations: Remediation for America’s Historical Black Massacres, an international virtual conference focused on the history of Black massacres and pathways toward reparations and remediation. The conference examined the preservation of evidence, legal strategies for massacre-based reparations claims, and legislative approaches to redress, offering an early example of the interdisciplinary work that continues to shape this area of The Black Massacre Project’s work.
The Black Massacre Project also develops frameworks and recommendations that help institutions and communities consider meaningful responses to the enduring consequences of racial violence.
For inquiries, please contact us