The Ida B. Wells
Black Lives Archive Project
We verify each case, restore each name, and remember them as kin, not as evidence.
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Ida B. Wells · 1862–1931A living record that says: this happened, and these were their names.
The Ida B. Wells Black Lives Archive Project is a community archive that documents racial terror against Black Americans and holds it with dignity. Following the documentary method of Ida B. Wells, we verify each case, restore the name and life story of each person, and remember them as kin, not as evidence.
The map beside our title is real. It is "The Red Record of Lynching, 1889 to 1921," prepared and issued by the Colored Women's Clubs of Michigan. Wells and the women who carried this work counted, named, and refused to let the record be erased. We continue that lineage.
The behavior change is the point.
Our mission is to help white-bodied people move from consuming Black death as spectacle to witnessing and metabolizing grief as a disciplined practice. Archiving in Wells's tradition is that change made real: it replaces passive, extractive scrolling with rigorous documentation, remembrance, and care.
We hold Black joy alongside Black loss. In African and Indigenous traditions, death is not the end of life, and joy is the blessing. Remembering only the terror lets the terror have the last word. We refuse.
"The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them."
Mental
We verify and hold the record with integrity.
Emotional
We metabolize grief instead of dissociating.
Spiritual
We restore each name to a life remembered.
Somatic
We open and close the work in the body.
Meet the woman whose method we carry.
Before you enter, take a few minutes to witness her story.
Read her words for yourself. "The Red Record" (1895) is public domain and free.
When you enter, you become one of us.
This archive is not browsed. It is kept alive by people who choose a role and live into it.
Digital Archivists
Keepers of the record itself. We document, verify, and organize, so the truth survives.
Memory Keepers
We restore the names and the life stories, so no one becomes a statistic.
Grief & Joy Holders
We tend the heart of the work, metabolizing grief and carrying joy, so we witness without being consumed.
Members of our HYWF Collective are our Digital Archivists, Memory Keepers, and Grief & Joy Holders. Together, they make this archive possible.
Interested in a role? Become a member, or give a donation to sustain the work.
Join the Waitlist
This archive is entered as a practice of witnessing, not consumption. Add your name to the waitlist to be among the first welcomed in, and to join the community of witnesses.
Your email is held to grant access and share the weekly remembrance. It is never sold or shared.