Multiple and Evolving Communities in the NYC Civil Rights History Project

I' d like to introduce this project here the way I often do in person.I start by reading the following: Born out of New York City high school student activists' desire for material that would help them better understand the history of their city and schools, the New York City Civil Rights History Project (NYCCRHP) is an in-progress collaborative effort between youth and adult activists, scholars, educators, and local public history organizations.The project aims to build a middle-and high school level, classroom-friendly teaching resource that curates material from a variety of archives to explore histories of racist and ableist segregation in education and the varied, creative, and persistent effort of community activists to challenge it and to seek educational justice for all students.1 Then I flip to the next slide, showing a group of thumbnail-sized images, as many as thirty of them.The people depicted are young and old, appearing in real photos or as digital avatars.The postures of some are stiffly academic, while others appear relaxed and joyful.When I present our work, or when others on the project team do, we want it to be clear that we are part of a broader effort involving many. 2 I write today with the same commitment-recognizing what many have contributed, taught, and made possible in the NYCCRHP.Our work is just one point on the map of "community-engaged" projects in history of education featured in and beyond this HEQ forum.My reflections on the project here come from my experience; others might tell the story differently.Working on the NYCCRHP has helped me see, more robustly than I had before, that no singular or monolithic "community" exits, that communities shift over time, and that "community engagement" inherently is a varied and dynamic endeavor.To illustrate this point, I will trace one theme that emerged in our project based on the 1