Liberated Archives for Black Lives

Our Liberated Archives program focuses on education, documentation, and preservation of history. Liberated Archives illustrates Oregons’ discriminatory legislation through print material, historical documents, archival footage and photography. This legislation is juxtaposed against evidential multimedia that highlights the coinciding timeline of resistance and the long term impacts of the states’ Anti-Black laws, exclusionary zoning and redlining. These educational assets are vital to sustaining social change and through building upon these dialogues through a historical context, Don’t Shoot Portland is activating a call to action. Liberated Archives has been presented across several mediums that include art exhibits, panel discussions & plenaries, community preservation workshops, published curriculum and more. Since 2017, Liberated Archives has been presented in partnership with libraries, universities and museums across the country.

Memory Work for Black Lives is an extension of Liberated Archives as an ongoing collaboration with University of Oregon’s Special Collections University Archives. Learn more about Memory Work for Black Lives here.

Resistance is Happening Now: Archiving the Black Lives Matter Movement, 2024

Liberated Archives, 2021 at HOLDING Contemporary

Center of Injustice as part of the Policing Justice exhibit at Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), 2024