About the Project

In September 2000, Detroit Public Television and Michigan State University began meeting to discuss the use of digital technology to preserve the American Black Journal tape collection, create a significant multimedia archive around this collection and expand public access to 33 years of historic American Black Journal (ABJ) television programs.

Initial funding for this endeavourer came in 2003 with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Programs Division. During this consultation project DPTV staff, MATRIX staff at MSU and humanities scholars collaborated to develop humanities themes, produce an online prototype website featuring selected shows (4 initially) and create a concrete plan for providing an online version of this rich multimedia archive of African American history and culture to the public audience.

In the second phase of this venture – supported by an Implementation Grant awarded through the National Endowment for the Humanities Public Programs Division – the project team executed significant portions of the foundational plan developed in phase one. Staff and advisors identified an additional ABJ shows for transfer, set up a ¾” transfer workstation at MSU’s MATRIX, calibrated the system with professional assistance, digitized these shows, produced streaming media files, set up the MATRIX repository with the Public Broadcasting Core metadata scheme, and developed a template for displaying the repository material and metadata in the ABJ Online website. Aiming to provide an interpretive frame and enhance public access to ABJ shows, scholars created show summaries and categorized the shows according to 10 major themes in African-American history including:

1. Education and Families: Building Opportunity and Community
2. Leadership: Politics, Politicians and Reform
3. Musical Roots and Branches: Jazz, Motown, Gospel, HipHop, & Techno
4. Literature and Language: The Richness and Diversity of Black Voices
5. Religion and Spiritual Life
6. Sports and Entertainment: Actors, Athletes and the Black Community
7. Africa and African-Americans
8. Urban Challenges: Development, Re-development, and Community Life
9. Poverty, Progress, and the Rise of African-American Businesses and Professionals
10. Motor City & Motown: Detroit in Regional and National Context

Most recently, the Institute for Museum and Library Services awarded MSU, DPTV, and the Michigan Historical Center, a Partnership for a Nation of Learners Community Collaboration Grant to further develop the American Black Journal online digital repository. This funding is currently being used to develop a rich set of publicly available multi-media resources on African American history in Michigan. This project is locating the emerging record of the Underground Railroad’s resistance to slavery within the historical contours of the struggle for civil rights. Through archival public television programs and interviews, curated excerpts of legal documents, images including photographs and drawings, contextual narrative and carefully linked metadata, the resulting project will explore Detroit’s role as a site of contestation between anti- and pro-slavery forces, Michigan as a microcosm of larger national and international forces of slavery and freedom, and the connections among 19th and 20th century dimensions of America’s civil rights movement. Through detailed exploration of this history, the project will advance the audience’s understandings of civic engagement in public and legal processes – in short, what citizens in a democratic society can do when they believe a law is unfair.

The National Television and Video Preservation Fund provided additional funding to restore and transfer half of the 2" Quad format video tapes in the ABJ collection.