MIT Black History Project

The MIT Black History Project is an ongoing collaborative research effort sponsored by the MIT Office of the Provost working to archive 150+ years of the black experience at MIT.

The mission of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.

The Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world’s great challenges. MIT is dedicated to providing its students with an education that combines rigorous academic study and the excitement of discovery with the support and intellectual stimulation of a diverse campus community. We seek to develop in each member of the MIT community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind...A Better World.

The MIT Black History Project’s mission is to research, identify, and produce scholarly curatorial content. It is important to venture back in time, to search for evidence of the role and experience of blacks since the Institute opened its doors in 1865 for academic achievement and research. The project’s continuing objective is to place the black experience at MIT in its full and appropriate context by researching and disseminating a varied set of materials and by exposing a larger community of interests — both inside and outside MIT — to this rich, historically significant legacy.

Sponsored by the MIT Office of the Provost, the MIT Black History Project began in October of 1995. The vision of Founder and Director Clarence G. Williams aimed to bring an additional humanistic interface to one of the world's premier science, engineering, and research driven educational institutions.