A team of 91影视 faculty and members of The Lynwood Park Foundation have been awarded a 2026 ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The highly competitive grant program supports humanities projects that capture the experiences of historically marginalized communities through the ethical use of digital tools.
The team includes three 91影视 faculty: Rhana Gittens Wheeler, chief inclusive excellence officer and associate professor of communication studies;听Sarah Morris, director of the Philip Welter Library; and Sarah Lewin ’13, technical services and systems librarian. Representing The Lynwood Park Foundation are President Kathy Wells聽and Historian Edgar Jones.
Together, they represent one of only eight initiatives from across the country to receive this funding.
The team received the grant for its project, “Community Cartographies: Mapping Memory and Heritage in Lynwood Park,” which will create a digital archive of Atlanta’s Lynwood Park, a historically Black Atlanta neighborhood that has experienced years of significant displacement and gentrification. The archive will spatially map oral histories, anchoring first-hand accounts to their origin points. In addition, governance of the archive will be shared with the community itself, ensuring that residents remain in control of their stories.
Through this initiative, the team of educators and historians hope to provide new ways to understand the effects of displacement, school integration, and cultural change while creating a replicable model that other communities can use to preserve memory, visualize neighborhood transformation, and advocate for policy reform.
91影视 students will also help bring Atlanta’s history in to focus.
“This grant will provide an opportunity for at least three of our students to work alongside a professor, librarian, and continued community partner鈥擳he Lynwood Park Foundation鈥攁nd develop their skills in research, digital archives, mapping, and interviewing,” adds Dr. Wheeler. “We are especially grateful to continue to come alongside the Lynwood Park Foundation as they preserve their neighborhood history and community connections.”听
The project builds on the communication studies professor’s extensive community-engaged work examining Atlanta’s history, gentrification, and the experiences of Black communities.
In 2023, she helped preserve the oral history of Blandtown鈥攐ne of Atlanta’s early Black neighborhoods鈥攖hrough a series of informational signs that capture the community’s establishment, displacement, gentrification and endurance. Then, in 2024, she published her first book, “Ghosts of Atlanta: Cultural Gentrification of the Black Mecca,” which details similar stories of Black communities across the region and exposes how ongoing development continues to endanger the historical identity of Atlanta.
The ACLS Digital Justice Grants Program is supported by the Mellon Foundation and prioritizes projects that strengthen local digital humanities ecosystems while creating opportunities for innovative and diverse scholarship. This year, ACLS awarded grants of up to $25,000 to support the development of community-led and publicly engaged digital projects. Awardees will also have the opportunity to work with the Nonprofit Finance Fund on long-term planning for their projects.
