Several universities in St. Louis are participating in the Regional Collecting Initiative on Ferguson. The effort is collecting information, oral histories, photographs, new stories, and other items to document the people and events surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer. The group has created a website where all the collected information and other resources are available for researchers.
Universities participating in the initiative are historically Black Harris-Stowe State University, the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Washington University, and Saint Louis University.
In a joint statement, the participating institutions said that “it is our hope that the people of the surrounding areas who are engaged in the creative and social justice work of this movement see our spaces as places that inspire confidence when entrusting their content to us. Joined together as a collective of institutions made up of individuals from different St. Louis communities, this collecting initiative exemplifies that we all have a stake in making sure that our individual and collective stories are represented in all of their diversity and complexity.”
