About
Acknowledgments:
This project is indebted to the residents of the McDougall Street Corridor, past and present. We are especially grateful to those who generously donated their time, expertise, advice, stories, trust, and documents to this project.
The We Were Here: Recovering the Stories of Windsor's McDougall Street Corridor digital exhibit is a collaboration between the Essex County Black Historical Research Society, the University of Windsor’s Leddy Library, their Archives and Special Collections and their Centre for Digital Scholarship.
Project Team:
Willow Key: lead researcher. To learn more about Willow Key and her work, click here.
Irene Moore Davis: community historian and advisor
Dr Sarah Glassford: archivist
Dr Heidi Jacobs: librarian and project manager
Edyta Saklak: Omeka development and support
Christina Olsen: digitization and metadata creation
Special thanks to: Dr Phillip Alexander, Nancy Allen, Rev. Della Bost, Shantelle Browning Morgan, Carmen Carter, Gale Carter, Kim Elliott, Dr Kevin Ellsworth, Elise Harding-Davis, Nels Katzman, Lois Larkin, Florence Logan, Daniel Marcuz, Jonathan Milsap, Irene Moore Davis, Sydnie Moore, Patricia Neely-McCurdy, Barbara Porter, Deb Remekie, Kenneth Rock, George Kirk Scott, Kimberly Simmons, Cherie Steele-Sexton, Clayton Talbert Sr, Lana Talbot, Edith Thomas, Karen Thomas Moore, Marium Tolson-Murtty, Teajai Travis, Anna Walls, Tramaine Whited, Faye Wilson and the Wilson Sisters.
The origins of this project were initiated by the University of Windsor’s Anti-Black Racism Student Leadership Engagement Grant, sponsored the University of Windsor’s Office of the President and the Office of the Vice-President Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.
Additional funding for this project came from My Main Street, the Government of Canada through the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario (FedDev Ontario), University of Windsor’s Student Success and Leadership Centre, and the Centre for Cities. Significant in-kind donations came from the Essex County Black Historical Research Society and Leddy Library.
Additional thanks to: Dr Selinda Berg, Rino Bortolin, Tiffany Brown, Cindy Crump, Sue Fader, Lauren Lopez, Karleigh Kochaniec, Dolores Mastromattei, Marium Tolson-Murtty, Paul Scobie, Anneke Smit, Dino Spagnuolo, and Peter Zimmerman.
The University of Windsor’s Anti-Black Racism Student Leadership Engagement Grant did more than offer support to a young and promising scholar. It also showed the importance of providing opportunities to, as the grant’s goals describe, “foster student-led research and leadership skills, enhance student engagement and the student experience, and assist in the training of highly creative and motivated students.” This project is an example of the kind of work that can be done with institutional support such as this grant.
To learn more about Willow Key and her work, click here.