South Bronx History Keepers - Incite at Columbia University

History-making work in the South Bronx is hidden in plain sight. In community gardens, workplaces, church basements, barber shops, hair salons, and senior centers, on stoops and sidewalks, countless informal historians—or history keepers—keep scrapbooks, tell stories, and teach young people.

The stories these history keepers hold are as varied as the history of Mott Haven itself: stories of resilience in the face of fires that burned through the neighborhood in the 1970s and 80s; of HIV and AIDS; of Covid-19; of the neighborhood’s global impact on music and art; of organizing community-controlled healthcare; of developing co-operative housing; and of connectedness, creativity, and community.

South Bronx History Keepers aims to support existing history keepers working outside of humanities institutions, expanding what counts as humanities work and who counts as humanities workers. 

In our first phase of work, funded by a 2023-2025 Community and Cultural Resilience grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, we supported ten history keepers in the Mott Haven neighborhood, connecting them with intellectual, financial, and archival resources. We met monthly for a year and a half, sharing food, stories, skills, and knowledge. Our toolkit, in English and Spanish, shares some of what we learned from that work.

Since 2025, the work has continued in a monthly meet-up at the Mott Haven branch of the New York Public Library, open to anyone interested in South Bronx history. Registration and details here. In 2027 we are launching a second group in the West Bronx. In addition to support from Incite and BCHS, this work has been made possible  by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Directed by Amy Starecheski and Steven Payne, South Bronx History Keepers is a partnership between Incite and The Bronx County Historical Society (BCHS). Starecheski is a fourth-generation South Bronx resident, director of Columbia Oral History, past president of the Oral History Association, and co-PI on the NEH-funded, “Diversifying Oral History Practice: A Fellowship Program for Under/Unemployed Oral Historian”. Mott Haven History Keepers builds on Starecheski’s efforts to develop models for non-extractive, fairly compensated, community-led history-making work.