Initial ideas
Challenge Question: How can we create a practical tool that helps organizers draw on Black resistance traditions to navigate challenges in organizing today?
Challenge: Organizers today must make difficult decisions about how to build trust, connect people across communities, protect participants, sustain momentum, respond to opposition, and turn collective action into lasting change. Black communities have confronted related challenges through maroon communities, abolitionist movements, the Underground Railroad, Black political organizing, self-emancipation, and other forms of collective resistance. Students will work with organizers to identify a real need and create a useful tool that translates lessons from these traditions without oversimplifying their distinct historical contexts.
What Students Will Make and Do: Students will collaborate with organizers to design, test, and refine a practical organizing resource grounded in Black resistance history. Depending on the partner’s needs and students’ design decisions, the final product might be:
An app or interactive website
A strategy card deck
A decision-making or reflection tool
A facilitation guide or workshop
A network-mapping toolkit
A digital or print field guide
Another accessible resource designed for a specific organizing need
Students will:
Interview or consult with organizers to identify a meaningful current challenge.
Research historical examples of Black collective resistance and political organizing.
Analyze the goals, strategies, networks, constraints, risks, and outcomes associated with each example.
Identify strategic principles that may help organizers think through present-day dilemmas.
Develop historically accurate case studies, strategy profiles, or planning prompts.
Generate and evaluate multiple possible solutions before selecting a format.
Create a prototype and test it with intended users.
Gather feedback on its usefulness, clarity, accessibility, historical accuracy, and ethical design.
Revise the resource and share or hand it off to the partner.
The tool should help organizers examine possibilities and make informed decisions, rather than prescribe a single strategy or suggest that historical and contemporary conditions are interchangeable.
Key Content:
Unit 2B Topics and Themes
Maroon communities and the creation of autonomous spaces
Individual and collective resistance to enslavement
Abolitionist movements, arguments, publications, and organizing strategies
The Underground Railroad as a network of communication, movement, shelter, and collective risk
Black political thought about freedom, citizenship, equality, abolition, and self-determination
Organizing networks within and across Black communities
The roles of speeches, newspapers, conventions, churches, relationships, and community institutions
Black participation, resistance, and self-emancipation during the Civil War
The relationship among Black collective action, the Civil War, and emancipation
Juneteenth as a history of emancipation, delayed enforcement, memory, and continuing struggle
Continuity and change in Black resistance strategies
Skills: 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A, 2B, 2C, 3A, 3B, 3C
Potential Partners:
Grassroots Organizers
Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100): byp100.org
The Brotherhood Sister Sol (BroSis): brotherhood-sistersol.org
Equality for Flatbush (E4F): equalityforflatbush.org
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM): freethelandmxgm.org
Historical & Cultural Experts
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture: nypl.org/locations/schomburg
Weeksville Heritage Center: weeksvillesociety.org
Black Gotham Experience (BGX): blackgotham.com
Civic Design & Tech Mentors
The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP): welcometocup.org
BetaNYC: beta.nyc