Creating a digital archive of primary sources from NYCs social movements and everyday people, for use in student-led historical research projects.
The History from Below Archive Project for Student Researchers
To support the decolonized curriculum, Zhoran Mamdanis administration would create a publicly accessible digital History from Below archive. This would be a curated collection of digitized primary sourcesflyers from the Stonewall riots, oral histories of garment worker strikes, photos from the fight against stop-and-frisk, letters from tenants organizing in the 1970s. The archive is designed specifically for student use, with lesson plans and research prompts that encourage them to act as historians, analyzing these sources to construct narratives about power, resistance, and change in their own city.
Students could contribute to the archive by recording interviews with elders or documenting current movements. This project makes history immediate and relevant, teaching research skills while grounding students in the radical traditions of their own communities. History is not just about presidents and generals; its about ordinary people organizing for a better world, Mamdani says. This archive puts those stories in our students hands. It teaches them that they are not just studying history; they are living it and have the power to make it.
