About Our Story Our Terms
Our Story, Our Terms: Documenting Movement Building from the Inside Out was developed as a project to document how three generations of activists built their social and political movements. Made possible through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Movement History Initiative partners, from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Legacy Project, Duke University Libraries, the Franklin Humanities Institute, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and organizers from , BYP 100, Dream Defenders, and Freedom Side convened and recorded intra- and intergenerational conversations telling the story of organizers from the inside-out and the bottom-up. .
Based in the Duke University Libraries from 2021-2024, Our Story, Our Terms the Movement History Initiative aimed to better understand activism and organizing that would allow future generations to learn from the experiences of these movements, their development, and their achievements to offer practical lessons in the struggle for human rights. The project also partnered current activist organizations with archivists to bring movement organizer and archivist communities together to use practical and digital tools so that today’s organizers can tell their own stories on their own terms and ensure that their records endure. It also provided important experience for those archivists to center ethical practices rooted in respect for community driven archives and learn from movement organizers.
Events
“Archiving Movement History: No Time Like the Present” Panel discussion features the archivists and activists from the OSOT project covering topics like the capabilities of community archives, archival resources in traditional institutions, funding inequities, strengthening preservation skills, and more.
The “(re)Imaging the Archives: Impact of Black Voices in Community Movement, Arts, and Education” Conversation Series. Featuring Black activists, artists and archivists discussing their thoughts behind capturing primary sources as art; the need to correctly document actions in movement work; and the steady change of recognizing the need for archives to reexamine traditionally white patriarchal and hierarchical practices in the archival field.
For more information on the project check out:
Our Story, Our Terms: Documenting Movement Building from the Inside Out | Duke University Libraries
Intergenerational Collaboration Makes History – The Devil’s Tale
