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The Living Archives project gathered, preserved, and shared the stories of Mecklenburg County residents navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. The project began in 2020 and re-launched in Spring 2022 with a renewed understanding that the COVID-19 experience was going to be on-going and complex. With a focus on equity, the Archive aimed to gather stories from Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Indigenous people who are often excluded from traditional archives. No one’s story should be lost, misrepresented, or ignored.

The stories, art poetry and music collected for the Living Archives have been shared back into the communities that donated them through a series of traveling exhibits and events in Spring 2024. These included events at library locations, JCSU and County facilities as well as a new permanent mural of storytellers and a grand closing event at Discovery Place in May. All of the stories collected will now reside permanently in the Robinson-Spangler Carolina Room as a digital archive of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library and provide critical context to scholars and neighbors alike.”

Project Origins

During the height of the pandemic, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library was collecting stories for a project called Engage 2020, which sought to tell the stories of women—particularly women of color—engaged in the suffrage movement and other civic initiatives over the last 100 years.

Over the course of the initiative, Engage 2020 became more than just another project, it became a once in a lifetime opportunity to capture history as it happened, to tell the stories of individuals, especially Black women, making a different today as they stand on the shoulders of those who came before them. Engage 2020 was an act of passion, of activism, and of allyship for everyone involved.
Martha Yesowitch

It was during the height of the pandemic that the Library understood the importance of capturing and preserving history by engaging with those deeply impacted. These are the origin stories collected during Engage 2020 that sparked the creation of the Living Archives Project.

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