Black History, First-Hand Accounts, and the Digital Humanities: A Workshop on The HistoryMakers Digital Archive
Interested in learning how to navigate and utilize one of the nation’s largest African American video oral history archives? Join us for a workshop centered on The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, the digital repository for the Black experience. This dynamic workshop will weave together Black history, oral interviews, and the digital humanities as a praxis for professional archival research. Led by University of Massachusetts Amherst W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies PhD student and Student Ambassador for The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, I’Maya Gibbs, the workshop will highlight the importance of the Black digital humanities.
The HistoryMakers archive comprises over 11,000 hours of first-person testimony from more than 3,600 African American leaders such as President Barack Obama, Congressman John Lewis, and Jesse Jackson. It contains oral life interviews of experts in the arts, business, civic engagement, education, entertainment, law, media, medicine, STEM, the military, music, politics, religion, sports, fashion, and beauty. The Library of Congress serves as its permanent repository.
Free and open to the public! Lunch and refreshments will be served.
I’Maya Gibbs is a second-year PhD student in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a 2025-2026 Student Ambassador for The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, the nation’s largest African American video oral history archive, and is committed to preserving and illuminating Black oral histories. Originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, I’Maya’s love for Black history and artistry is rooted in her hometown’s rich history and culture as well as her passion for theater. Her mission is to unearth the ways African Americans have used theater as a form of resistance to racial oppression and discrimination. In her future career and scholarship, I’Maya endeavors to expand the scope of figures within the Black Arts Movement and reframe understandings of the movement in Black urban centers.
Co-Sponsored by the UMass Public History Program and The HistoryMakers.