Please join the Champaign County Historical Archives (CCHA) of The Urbana Free Library as we keep a record of this important moment in our local history. CCHA is chronicling racial and social justice movements in Champaign County, like Black Lives Matter, by collecting physical and digital materials including photographs, videos, voice recordings, social media posts, poems, essays, reflections, artwork, organizational records, and more from community members. Community submissions will add to and complement our existing physical and web-archived collections from organizations including eBlack Champaign-Urbana, the Urban League of Champaign County, and the Champaign-Urbana Area Project. We welcome submissions from all ages and community members. Please submit as often as you’d like.
To donate larger collections of materials, or to discuss restrictions and access to materials, please contact Archives staff via email at archives@urbanafree.org or call 217-367-4025.
Potential ways to share your experiences:
- Take photographs or video of your environment/community/life in the current environment regarding BLM protests and connected events.
- Upload records from your business that document how it responded to current events (social media graphics, email or mail correspondence, business announcements, etc.)
- Save your social media posts
- Write: Keep a journal, write poetry or song lyrics, craft a narrative
- Create Art: Draw, paint, sketch, sculpt
- Start a video blog, speak into a recorder, play an original song
Instructions:
- The provided questions are optional, so feel free to answer only what you feel comfortable with.
- If you have photos, art, videos, audio, or other digital files to share, please use the file submission area within our Google Form. If your submission is larger than 10 MB, please contact the Champaign County Historical Archives at archives@urbanafree.org.
- If you are submitting a photo, video, piece of art, or any other digital file, please include a brief description, so we understand the context of the submission.
- If you are under the age of 18, please have a parent or guardian complete a consent form. Forms and records submitted by those under the age of 18 that do not include parental/guardian consent will not be archived. Consent forms will be sent to donors under the age of 18 following their submission and must be signed and returned to the Archives. For more information, please email us at archives@urbanafree.org.
Click here to access our submission form.
Thank you for sharing!