About — Maryland Institute Black Archives

Deyane Moses

Director & Curator

Deyane Moses is a veteran, artist, activist, and curator living in Baltimore, MD. She graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) with a BFA in Photography and an MFA in Curatorial Practice. She received international recognition during her studies for her project, The Maryland Institute Black Archives (MIBA), which documents MICA's Black history from the 1800s to the present and explores its relationship with Black Baltimoreans. MIBA and its accompanying programs prompted MICA’s President to issue a public statement apologizing for the College’s racist past. In 2020, Deyane founded Blackives, LLC a consulting firm that honors community traditions through postcustodialism.

Barellie Thompson

Social Media Manager & Photographer

Barellie (buh-rell-ee) Thompson is a photographer and video editor from Baltimore, Maryland. He currently uses his skills for Tendea Family, a Black organization based in Baltimore whose mission is to advance Baltimore's Black community, and MIBA.

See Barellie’s work at @its_buhrellee and @livefrommy8corners .

Amber C. Wheeler

Archivist Assistant

Amber Campbell-Wheeler, professionally known as Amber August, is a poet, writer, singer, and host from Baltimore, MD. She is currently the newest Archives Assistant for MIBA and hopes to use her passion for storytelling, research, and Black history to help educate others on less talked about figures and events in Baltimore's history.

Collections Development Policy

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The Maryland Institute Black Archives (MIBA) is a community archive independent of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Our mission is to preserve Black history at MICA and empower our community.

We collaborate with our community to collect, preserve, celebrate, and provide equal access to information resources that document Black history at the Institute. MIBA uses post-custodial principles to support community collectors in maintaining control of their archival records while providing preservation support and public access. MIBA strives to meet the research, instructional, and entertainment needs of our community, scholars, and the general public.

We encourage our community to seek reparations for past, present, and continuing harms. We are dedicated to assisting with the growing movement for racial justice by contributing to a deeper understanding of Black Baltimore and the Institution's history.

Collection Focus

MIBA exists to correct the historical record of MICA. Our collection documents the history of MICA from the 1800s to the present, particularly through the eyes of the Black Community and the college’s hometown of Baltimore, Maryland. Our community archive is composed of digital-born artifacts, artwork, correspondence, official records, oral histories, photographic materials, printed materials, charts, and research notes.

Our collection focuses on uncovering the legacy of Black people affiliated with the Institute through community and public participation. As a result, the history of individuals, loosely organized groups, and social movements are emphasized in the collection. Our collection reflects the power and potential for transparency, accountability, community empowerment, and restoration of the historical record for Black communities within predominantly white institutions.

Collection strengths include artwork, demographic data, exhibitions, events, alumni, overlooked Baltimore artists, historic photographs, and oral histories. Underdeveloped collecting areas include the Institute’s founders, denied students, campus life, and Black Student Union records; as well as an overall lack of documentation of MICA’s Open Studies program. MIBA is committed to addressing these weaknesses and pursuing collection development in these areas. Our collection is in its infancy and ongoing.

Community Assessment

The city of Baltimore occupies the stolen ancestral land of the Piscataway, Susquehannock, and Nentego (Nanticoke) people. Baltimore is home to a living community of Lumbee, who migrated to the Upper Fells Point and Washington Hill areas of the city beginning in the 1930s. We offer our respect and gratitude to the indigenous peoples’ past, present and future, whose custodial responsibility we benefit from. We also acknowledge the land stolen from these nations and their inherent right to self-determination.

The history of African Americans in Baltimore dates back to the 17th century when the first enslaved African were being brought to the Province of Maryland. Unlike many other Northern cities whose African-American populations first became well-established during the Great Migration, Baltimore has a deeply rooted African-American heritage, being home to the largest population of free black people half a century before the Emancipation Proclamation. The migrations of Southern and Appalachian African Americans between 1910 and 1970 brought thousands of African Americans to Baltimore, transforming the city into the second northernmost majority-black city in the United States after Detroit. Majority white for most of its history, Baltimore transitioned to having a black majority in the 1970s. As of the 2010 Census, African Americans are the majority population of Baltimore at 63% of the population. For the last several decades Baltimore has ranked 5th with the largest population of African Americans of any city in the United States. African Americans have had an enormous impact on the culture, dialect, history, politics, and music of the city. The city's African-American community is centered in West Baltimore and East Baltimore. The distribution of African Americans on both the West and the East sides of Baltimore is sometimes called "The Black Butterfly", while the distribution of white Americans in Central and Southeast Baltimore is called "The White L."

In 1891, MICA was forced to admit its first Black student, Harry T. Pratt, or forfeit its contract and appropriation with the city. Over the next three years, three additional Black male students were admitted to the Institute causing a decline in enrollment, as MICA was known as a “mixed-race” school. In 1894, MICA’s Board of Directors voted to change the admissions policy to admit “reputable white-pupils only”. From 1895 until 1954 when schools were desegregated, MICA refused to admit Black artists. Nevertheless, many artists attempted and Black life within the city of Baltimore continued to influence culture at the Institute.

Credit: MICA Office of Research
***** This report was changed to make our internal race/ethnicity reporting consistent with IPEDS reports (Middle States uses the IPEDS reports for their Annual Institution Update survey). The biggest effects that adopting this change had was that the number of Hispanic students increased and the number of Other students decreased.

MICA’s demographics do not reflect the predominantly Black city which surrounds it. For Black students, simply accessing higher education remains difficult, especially at a private art and design college. Coupled with American’s legacy of racism against people of color, being the only Black student in the room can be quite traumatic. Black students experience a myriad of microaggressions, feelings of isolation, and often carry the burden of representation when it comes to speaking about things from a historical context. Thanks to the advocacy of our community, changes in leadership. fellowship opportunities for artists of color, art education programs designed for financially challenged minors living in Baltimore city, and an increase in Black faculty and administration at the Institute–MICA has quadrupled its Black student population since 1996.

Until the creation of MIBA, MICA’s Black history was largely unknown to the Institute and the city of Baltimore. In 2010, MICA published a 300 plus page autobiography. While rich with institutional knowledge it conveniently whitewashes its racist history, glazes over Black Baltimore’s influence on the college, and the accomplishments of Black alumni.

In addition to research, community engagement, and exhibition creation the collection serves a higher purpose. Implementing post-custodial principles yields authority to our community. The primary role of the collection is to empower the Black Community and motivate social change within the field of art and design. By preserving, celebrating, and providing equal access to ignored and untold stories, we reclaim our power to construct our own narratives and determine what has value for the present—and the future.

Function & Users

Users of the collection include scholars, graduate students, undergraduate students, and the general public. Educators interested in instruction sessions related to the collection are encouraged to contact the Curator for more information.

Community outreach is the foundation of the MIBA. Ongoing engagement with our community and conversations with our community partners provide support in our collection development and encourage collaborative projects. Blogs and exhibits rely on collection material to create a bridge to our users and the broader public.

Acquisitions & Deaccessions

MIBA collects digital-born artifacts, artworks, scrapbooks, correspondence, diaries, official records, printed materials, financial documents, maps, charts, architectural drawings, literary productions, legal documents, audio recording, photographic materials, and computer records which illuminate Black history and experience at MICA.

MIBA owns a small percentage of the total collection. The majority of our collection is sourced from our community and community partners, or are digital-born artifacts from outside institutions or publications–all contributors retain ownership of their records.

At this time, MIBA is accepting additional accessions of material related to existing collections, as well as new material on a limited basis. Please contact the Curator for the Acquisition Policy.

MIBA retains the right to remove or transfer collections to other archival agencies from the repository when material falls beyond the scope of the collection development policy. Please refer to the Deaccession Policy for further information.

Cooperation with Other Institutions

The Maryland Institute Black Archives (MIBA) is an independent institution. Established in 2018 as an undergraduate thesis project at the Institute, MIBA has earned the support of the Black community and respect of the city through archives and community activism. MIBA has applied for, and received, more than $15,000 in grant funds from MICA and more than $14,000 in community donations for its repository, acquisitions, and public programming.

Select community partners include MICA, the Baltimore Afro-American Newspaper, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), the University of Baltimore, the Peale Museum, and the Maryland Center for History and Culture.

Much of our collection focuses on Black history and art and therefore may overlap with records in other institutions. MIBA acknowledges this shared provenance and makes every effort to provide collaborative access and direct researchers to complementary material at this repository.

An ethos of cooperative collecting will guide collection development in MIBA. The relative collection strengths and active acquisition activities of archival institutions will be taken into consideration in our acquisition decisions, with every attempt made to avoid competition with our peer institutions.