WELCOME TO BLAC!
Black Lives at Cal (BLAC) is a multi-year initiative to celebrate, defend, and advance the legacy of Black people at the University of California, Berkeley, since the university’s founding in 1868. Formed in 2021 as both a research endeavor and an archival venue, BLAC researches, preserves, and publicizes insights about the people, events, and communities that have shaped Black history at Berkeley and examines the “living history” of the Black experience today.
BLAC advances these goals by (1) exhibiting in digital form the images, documents, and interviews in the archival record; (2) fostering and presenting new research by students and scholars; and (3) serving as a resource on the Black experience in the twenty-first century. To accomplish this, Black graduate students mentor Black undergraduate students through the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP) in three teams: research, content creation, and special projects. Students participate in every aspect of BLAC such as identifying and cataloging of resources, oral history interviews, web design, and community engagement.
BLAC is an initiative of the African American Thriving Initiatives and the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues(link is external)(link is external), and is endorsed by the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies(link is external)(link is external). BLAC has been further sponsored by the Black Studies Collaboratory,(link is external)(link is external) the Black Recruitment and Retention Center(link is external)(link is external), the Big C Fund(link is external)(link is external), and the Office of the Chancellor