“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work.” – Toni Morrison Earlier this month I had BIG PLANS to do a weekly blog on some of St. Paul AME church’s notable members as part of the congregation’s 150th anniversary celebration. I did two. Then I started seeing disturbing reports from one of our summer interns about racism in our college town. I was sad and angry, but not shocked. Racism has been a part of my experience with this particular town, too. So, I’ve been busy throwing whatever support I can to Grinnell College’s global majority ..read more

Our celebration of St. Paul A.M.E. Church’s 150th year continues. Today we’re taking a look at Mr. James B. Morris, Sr., a man who absolutely did *all of the things.* James B. Morris was born in Atlanta, Georgia on August 15. 1890. His parents had both been enslaved. One of his earliest memories was of his best friend being strung up and set on fire after having been accused of impropriety with a white woman. James went away to Hampton Institute in Virginia, where he graduated in 1912. He went on to attend Howard Law School in Washington, DC, graduating in 1915. In 1916, he arrived in Des Moin ..read more

This month, St. Paul A.M.E. Church celebrates 150 years. We’re going to celebrate with them, and take a closer look at some of the congregation’s most influential members and their contributions to Black life in central Iowa. Today we’ll kick off our series with Gertrude Rush. Mrs. Rush caught my attention as the only woman featured on a stone memorial outside of St. Paul’s A.M.E. church. When St. Paul was founded in 1872, Gertrude Rush was a 2 year old living in Navasota, Texas. She moved to Des Moines in 1907 and graduated from Des Moines University. She went on to read the law with her husb ..read more

We had an internship. We learned some stuff. What’s next? Digesting and sorting Evelynn and Amani’s work to look for trends and other areas of exploration. Tooling our internship to work with Des Moines Public Schools Silver Cord program, an opportunity for students to be recognized for completing 200 hours of community service during high school. Fundraising so that we can do it again and self-fund our interns ..read more

We continue our discussion of applying Agile principles to historic research on this sunny Monday. Today we’re talking about lessons learned, and the Agile ritual of a regularly scheduled look-back. The lessons learned exercise is one of my favorites. Each week, Amani, Evelynn and I take a look back at the week and hash out what worked and what did not work. Having a regular forum for the team to provide honest and constructive feedback is so important to keeping the team thriving. We made some adjustments. We acknowledged very early on that it is tough to do a lot of heavy reading after havin ..read more

In today’s edition of “How We Work,” I am going to talk about the Agile concept “Definition of Done.” What does it mean, “Definition of Done.” Well, it’s how you know you’re done. In software development, whatever you were assigned to do is supposed to do something at the end. Does the thing do what it was supposed to do? If yes, congratulations! You’re done! Does the thing do 78% of what it was supposed to do? Yes? Sorry…you are not done. What does this mean at Black History Research Collective? One of our tasks this summer was to design a logo. Within about 2 weeks, I had a .jpg file from Am ..read more

In today’s edition of How We Work, I’m going to talk about how we apply the Agile concept of “the backlog” to historic research. The backlog is basically the pile of work that is ready to be worked. Our backlog is housed in Trello, a free project management software by Atlassian, and has been a great freeware solution for our organization. This summer, our backlog has been composed of three primary work tracks: Web + Branding, Black Churches in Des Moines built prior to 1925, and Old Congregations in New Buildings (congregations dating back to the 1800s who were displaced by interstate and hos ..read more

One of my old teachers used to tell us that organization was the key to success. 16 year old me found this cheesy and annoying. 46 year old me knows it’s true. I chose an Agile-like structure for a variety of reasons, the first of which, is that Agile is familiar to me. Agile is a methodology/framework (although purists resist calling it either) commonly used in corporate IT organizations. So…How are we applying Agile concepts to historic research? Daily Stand-Ups or Scrums: As a start-up non-profit, we don’t have physical space. With the pandemic still raging (two-thirds of our small, mighty ..read more

Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines, Iowa has been through various different leaders in their time, but there’s one pioneering pastor who sparked hope through his sermons. And, according to a clipping from The Des Moines Register, he was given $1 and a chicken to preach on Sundays, but that’s not all he did. Reverend Fields was the pastor of Mount Olive Baptist for 40 years and an active leader in the Civil Rights Movement during the 50s and 60s. When he was still a young minister, Reverend Fields traveled along Iowa and Missouri highways carrying a sack of sandwiches because w ..read more

A few days ago I came across a snippet in the Des Moines Register Archives from April 8, 1934: Bethel A.M.E. Church was hosting a lecture on Black Maternal Health, given by Dr. Nelle Noble. This short newspaper clipping from nearly 90 years ago is illustrative of the many ways Black Churches filled the gaping holes left by the white power structure and took care of their people. Before birth control, before Roe v. Wade (and it’s repeal on Friday, June 24, 2022), before Black Maternal Health Week, the leadership at Bethel A.M.E. partnered with white woman doctor and ally, Dr. Nelle Noble. In 19 ..read more