The Black Syracuse Project (BSP) is a community history initiative that documents, preserves, and shares the history of people of African descent in Central New York.  The project includes oral history intrviews, newspaper clippings, digitized newspapers, photographs, historical documents, funeral programs and obituaries, and an online encyclopedia.

BSP is housed in Syracuse University’s African American Studies (AAS) Department in the College of Arts & Sciences.  Joan Bryant coordinates BSP initiatives in collaboration with other area faculty members and organizations.  Past and present collaborators include Professor Kishi Animashaun Ducre (SU-AAS); Professor Omani Abdullah (SU-AAS); Professor Marcia Robinson (SU-Religion); Bird Library (SU); Black History Preservation Project; Committee to Save 711 AME Zion; FORCE; Martin Luther King Library (SU-AAS); Onondaga Historical Association; and the Paul Robeson Performing Arts Company.

BSP initiatives have received funding  from the Syracuse Campus-Community Entrepreneurship Initiative’s “enitiative” grant, the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences: Humanities in the Digital Age Excellence Initiative, and Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life.

For more information, contact:

Joan Bryant, Associate Professor
African American Studies Department
208 Sims Hall
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY 13244
Phone: 315-443-4399
Email: jobryant@syr.edu