T hroughout Middle Georgia, there are countless items pertaining to the history of African Americans waiting to be preserved and digitized. Photographs, documents, ephemera, clothing, with each artifact being unique and irreplaceable, capturing moments of an intricate and important history.

Through a $12,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and in partnership with the Common Heritage Program, the Ina Dillard Russell Library’s Special Collections is taking on an initiative to do just that: documenting and preserving an important aspect of Middle Georgia history that is often overlooked. “Our hope is to create a digital collection so that when people are searching for information about Milledgeville, they get a much more inclusive idea of the community,” said Dr. Shaundra Walker, interim-director of the Ina Dillard Russell Library. 

There is also global trend in which libraries encourage the public to contribute their historical artifacts to databases across the world, which is one the reasons why Walker is excited to receive the grant. “The Common Heritage Program recognizes that there is a lot of value in the information and knowledge, as well as the artifacts, that a community has,” Walker said. “It acknowledges that there is expertise outside of the library, so part of this program will seek to highlight and acknowledge that expertise, to put a spotlight on it and make people more aware of it.”