Living History: Preserving and Sharing Black History in Chicago

The Black Metropolis History Consortium is dedicated to discovering, preserving and promoting the use of materials documenting the history of Black Chicago. Marcia Walker-McWilliams, the group’s Executive Director, will talk about her organization’s efforts to make the history of African-Americans in Chicago available for all of us today and for historians and researchers in the future.

Marcia Walker-McWilliams is the Executive Director of the Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC). She received a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate degree in Social Policy and African American Studies from Northwestern University.

As a graduate student, Marcia worked in archival processing with the Mapping the Stacks Project and the Harsh Archival Processing Project. Walker-McWilliams is the author of Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality (University of Illinois Press, 2016) and is co-author on two upcoming projects, A Civil Rights Movement Reader (UMass Press) with Dr. Tracie Parker and New Histories of Black Chicago (under review) with Simon Balto and Erik Gellman.

Prior to taking her position with the BMRC, Walker-McWilliams taught courses in American history and African American Studies at Lone Star College, Prairie View A&M University, the University of Houston and Rice University where she also served as an Associate Director in the Center for Civic Leadership.