Old College, where a self-emancipated Black person sought shelter in the winter of 1853. Evans Hall, where the first Black student known to attend the University of Delaware took electrical engineering classes in 1949. And Newark’s Main Street, where in 1961 UD students fought to desegregate the iconic thoroughfare’s shops and restaurants.

These are a few of the “stops” featured on the Black Histories at UD StoryMap, a virtual tour that ties stories of Black community members, students, faculty members and racial justice activists to specific sites on the UD campus and the greater Newark area.

The StoryMap, which tells previously under-researched and overlooked histories, was funded and conceived through the UD Anti-Racism Initiative (UDARI) and supported by the work of the Campus Tour Committee, now the Black Histories at UD Committee.

“The University of Delaware should be a campus that's open and feels like a welcoming spot to all students of all backgrounds, and one way to do that is to share everyone's histories and to make everyone feel included,” said Alison Parker, a professor in the Department of History and founder of UDARI. “Even if some of the history is painful and relates back to histories of enslavement, it's empowering and enlightening to be able to see and understand that history and to know where students along the way demanded change.”

Since 2022, three student interns — Alenoush Davis, Elisa Davila and Tara Lennon — have worked on the project, scouring sources like UDaily, The Review, University Archives, oral histories and more to share and make accessible the understudied histories.

“Our collective goal was to be able to capture Black history at UD, which is a really big goal,” said Davis, a senior history and Japanese double major who has worked as a UDARI intern for the past two years. “History is written by those who are in power, not those who are oppressed. Black people historically have been oppressed, so it's very hard to find stories, and when you can, you really need to work to find them. We see the story map as a living, breathing document, and our goal is to keep adding to it.”

It was important that the StoryMap be student-authored, according to Jennifer Van Horn, chair of the UDARI Campus Tour Committee and professor of art history and history.

“We thought it was especially important at an educational institution to be sure that University of Delaware students were actively engaged in this work and that their perspectives and voices were those that helped to recover and to highlight and narrate these stories,” she said.

The StoryMap launched in December at a virtual event that gave an overview of the project. Several alumni who are featured in the map spoke at the event.

“It's really exciting to be able to see how many of these stories we've been able to tell, how many people we've involved in the process, and also how much we can continue to add, refine and change,” said Parker, who is co-chair of the Black Histories at UD Committee along with Roger Horowitz, adjunct professor in the Department of History and director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at Hagley Museum and Library. “To me, what's fun is just the surprise of when you click on one of the stories and learn about things that you might never have known otherwise.”

Van Horn said she hopes the StoryMap will be an instigator for commemorating Black histories at UD more widely and in more permanent and visible ways, such as through plaques, QR codes or monuments. She also stressed that more stories and “stops” on the tour can be added to the map. Community members can share their stories through an online form.

“We wanted this to be a dynamic resource,” Van Horn said. “It was really important to us that this be a first step — that more research and more histories and more stories could be added and layered on, and that this could continue to grow and change to reflect the new important stories that are coming to light.”