Black Lunch Table

Mission & Vision

Black Lunch Table is a vernacular history archiving project. Our mission is to build a more comprehensive understanding of cultural history by illuminating the stories of Black people and our shared stake in the world. We envision a future in which all of our histories are recorded and valued. 

We are expanding our staff and board, diversifying our partnerships and donor bases and expanding our programming footprint. We are excited to continue the work of disrupting the dominant historical narrative and the systemic othering of Black voices. We continue the work of addressing historical omissions by empowering marginalized voices to record, transcribe, archive, and publish their stories.

Values

• “Radical archiving”: If kids don’t see themselves in the world and in our stories; they can’t imagine that they can be and do more  
• Expansive and affirmative: The sum of all human knowledge includes Black stories
• Self-authorship; We have to author our own narratives or else we will be omitted and misrepresented;there has to be an inception point to think about writing about something; people don’t recognize their own biases  

Theory of Change 

We believe that true resource equity means equal access to knowledge, health, wealth, and social resources for everyone. This is only possible with a true and comprehensive record of the cultural, intellectual, and social contributions of Black artists. 

We help to build this record through our in-person roundtable sessions and our online Wikipedia initiative. 

Organized around literal and metaphorical lunch tables, our roundtable sessions convene spaces for genuine dialog on critical social issues, and then capture and share the rich conversations that grow out of this communion. 

At the same time, our online initiatives facilitate the collective authoring, and expansive collection, of information pertaining to the lives and works of Black artists, allowing for an expansive and radical rewriting of history to include all voices.

Program Descriptions

Through the Artists Roundtable, we provide a forum for Black artists to discuss critical issues directly affecting our community, making visible the connections that exist between contemporary artists of color.

At the People’s Table, community members dialogue about social and political issues affecting historically disenfranchised peoples, illuminating points of alignment within local communities and laying the foundation for collective work dismantling institutional racism.

Our Wikipedia Initiative empowers people to document their own histories. We train participants to create, update, and improve Wikimedia articles and items pertaining to the lives and works of black artists.  

The Archive provides a digital space for a community-driven approach to art, historical authorship, and discourse on Black studies and social justice issues. We organize and share both the recordings and transcripts from our roundtable session, demonstrating their relation not only to the individuals present but to a broader discourse about race unfolding within online spaces.