Research Questions

How does the range of standards and practices employed by black congregations in storing documents and material culture inform how they remember their histories? 

What barriers exist to African American churches developing preservation plans for their historical records? 

Does religio-racial identity complicate the implementation of digital humanities practices or pose problems to the production of digital archives?

Mapping Black Congregations

Below is a map of Black congregations in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. We have created this map as a tool for people who would like to identify where Black churches are located in the Twin Cities. We have also included the date the church was founded, if known, the contact information for each church, and the church website link. Therefore, this map is not only helpful for researchers interested in studying the history of Black churches, but it is also a helpful tool to study spatial trends which can help researchers understand why congregations are located where they are. Although this is not a comprehensive directory of Black churches in the Twin Cities, it is an important step which is working to further the geographic and communication resources available for research on African American religion.

You can zoom in and out on the map and click on a data point to learn more information about a particular church. Minneapolis data points are purple and St. Paul data points are pink.

Survey

After identifying these Black congregations in the Twin Cities, BCAP started a survey to learn more about their preservation efforts. Questions posed to the churches focused on whether or not they had a historical committee, the timeframe of most recent attempts to organize their records, and the status of any efforts to partner with museums or historical societies to preserve and store elements of their collections.

Conclusions

The BCAP team observed that current efforts by two partner churches in the Twin Cities to collect and organize their records show viable historical assets exist with potential for immediate conversion into digital assets. These records are arranged in boxes, folders, notebooks, scrapbooks, picture frames, ledgers, etc. Both sites demonstrate potential for creating multiple sub-collections within a church archive. Similar capacity within peer churches likely exists. In the case of one church, denominational standards appear to impact preservation practices more than other factors such as age, size, and location. Both sites evince materials that possess broad relevance to the political and economic life of the Twin Cities; one has significant materials collected and processed by the Minnesota Historical Society – 5 boxes totaling 6.25 linear feet. While several African American churches in cities across the United States are likely to have valuable historical documents, preservation by way of collection through a historical society or museum is unlikely due to limitations related to space, costs, and archival scope. The findings of the Black Church Archives Project support continued efforts to digitize and preserve the historical records of African American churches.

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