Honoring their legacies

Locally founded institute works to preserve histories of elder community leaders

BY DANIEL CURRY

In late February, Buffalo History Museum debuted an exhibit that honors Buffalo’s African-American community elders. Say Their Names: Honor Their Legacies was created by the Uncrowned Queens Institute, which works to preserve histories of African-American women and men across the country.

Founded in 1999 by Dr. Peggy Brooks-Bertram and Dr. Barbara Seals Nevergold, Uncrowned Queens Institute began as a project to commemorate the history of African and African-American involvement in the Pan-American Exposition that took place in Buffalo in 1901 as well as recognize accomplishments of AfricanAmerican women during Expo and the hundred years that followed. The women founded the Institute when they realized the project’s magnitude required its own sustainable organization.

“Uncrowned Queens was founded on a mission of finding and documenting the histories of African-

American women initially, and we added men later,” says Nevergold. “Making sure we were able to preserve those histories and make them readily available [online]. That’s been our mission all along, and it has included people who were perhaps well known, those who were unknown, and those who were little known. If you don’t record history in this way, you lose it.”

The Institute’s award-winning website serves as a comprehensive database with thousands of biographies and even allows users to submit new biographies and photos to what the founders refer to as their “technopedia.” Accessed by thousands of visitors, the website is used for research, educational purposes, and genealogy fact-finding.

One of the foundational goals of Uncrowned Queens is working closely with elder community leaders to ensure their detailed and accurate histories are recorded. “We realized both in terms of ourselves and the people in the community that there’s an urgency to collect and record those histories,” says Nevergold. “Many of the people that we’ve identified and that are part of this exhibit are in their eighties and nineties and, in one case, someone who just turned 100 and is still very active in the community.

“For many, we had biographies from ten or twenty years ago, and we wanted to update them to be more representative of what they have done,” Nevergold continues. “We were also able to gather in their own words what they thought were challenges that they had overcome, significant contributions that they have made, and advice they had given to young people about how to cope with discrimination and the racism and the divisiveness that we’re encountering today.”

To explore biographies or to submit a biography, visit the Uncrowned Community Builders database at uncrownedcommunitybuilders.com. Say Their Names: Honor Their Legacies is on view at the Buffalo History Museum through July 2023. FY

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