About the CBSCM

The Chicago Black Social Culture Map (CBSCM) is a public humanities platform and community archive for the preservation of Chicago’s Black social cultural lineage—past, present, and future. It seeks to document and share the lived experiences of Black Chicagoans from the Great Migration through the rise of House music and, in doing so, create an opportunity for this chronically under-documented constituency to see their histories represented as written record and archive and to share these histories with a wide demographic, from the casually curious to the academic experts.  Annually, the CBCSM presents public programs, archiving days, and exhibitions, which engage local in-person audiences and partners, as well as a growing virtual community through digital engagement.

The CBSCM archive encompasses the oral and material history of Chicago’s Black social culture across the 20th century from the Great Migration through the birth of house music. Since 2014, through open sessions, intentional interviews, and multi-faceted research, data has been compiled on over 350 venues in the Chicagoland area. Materials in the collection include audio-visual content such as born-digital recorded oral histories, documentation of panels hosted by the CBSCM and HPP and digitized audio from cassette tapes and CDs. The collection also hosts two-dimensional materials, including paper flyers, posters, small hand-held “pluggers,” and printed photographs.

The act of creating and sharing the CBSCM archive not only serves to canonize this important segment of American history, but also engages those whom the archive represents. By inviting them to actively help to build and shape this historical record, we are making known their agency as participants and history-makers. HPP purposefully approaches the process of archiving as a social, community driven practice, with the aim of fostering meaningful relationships between a wide range of institutions, grassroots efforts, and practitioners. In doing so, we hope to additionally serve the archiving and historic preservation community by facilitating connections with communities they may not normally have direct access to. Most public engagement around the archive takes place in community-based partner institutions and community centers on the South and West Sides of Chicago, both of which are home to majority Black and Brown communities.

The CBSCM has also partnered with local archives and organizations including the Blackivists, the Modern Dance Music Research and Archiving Foundation, the Center for Black Music Research, DuSable Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Center on Halsted, Chicago Community Bond Fund, Westside Justice Center, Links Hall, the Chicago Park District, and Arts + Public Life at University of Chicago to host programs and research entry content for venues and sites.