Preserve Our History Now, Before It Disappears Forever

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Have you ever attended a John Henrik Clarke presentation, or discovered one later online?

Picture him standing before a packed Harlem audience, tracing centuries of African history in his own voice, with no script and no notes. UPAMA holds recordings of moments like that.

The same is true for recordings of Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan, Regent Adelaide Sanford, Elombe Brath, and many other vital voices whose thoughts, scholarship, and organizing work shaped a generation. This is the history we are racing to save.

Today, many of these older recordings are reaching the end of their shelf life. Tapes are deteriorating, audio and video quality are fading, and every delay increases the risk that priceless history will be lost forever.

Once a tape is gone, the voice on it is gone as well.

Your gift goes straight to the work. Every dollar helps us rescue fragile recordings, transfer them into lasting digital formats, catalog the materials, and make this history accessible to students, educators, researchers, families, and communities. Here is what your support makes possible:

$50
Digitizes one hour of irreplaceable tape
$250
Preserves a full lecture or community forum
$1,000
Provides archival-grade digital storage that keeps thousands of recordings safe for the long term

Our goal is to raise $10,000 to keep this work moving.

5,000
hours of audio and video in the collection
1,800
hours digitized so far
$10,000
our fundraising goal

Why UPAMA, and Why Now

501(c)(3) nonprofit
Fully tax-deductible
Preserving since 2019
Recordings back to the 1980s

Ujima Pan African Media Archives is a New York-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit of activists, historians, and cultural workers, and your donation is fully tax-deductible. We have held our own nonprofit status since July 2022, building on work that began under a fiscal sponsor in July 2019.

The recordings themselves reach back to the 1980s, when the Sound Gatherers and independent documentarians began capturing this history for the community and for posterity. That work has since reached audiences through Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN) and Pacifica Radio WBAI.

Every contribution is invested directly in preserving this archive and opening it to the community.

This is more than an archive. It is a living inheritance: a record of our ancestors’ voices, our community’s resilience, and our ongoing struggle for justice and self-determination.

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