About the Youth Public History Institute

During the summer of 2023, sixteen young people explored anti-criminalization through a historical lens rooted in archival and other research methods.

As with most beginnings, there was a guiding question:

What would happen if walking tours were used to teach young people about the histories of slavery, prisons, and police in NYC, and the stories of collective resistance to the anti-Black violence and systemic oppression that has shaped this city?

The hope was that the 16 participants would:

Learn how to create a walking tour
Develop research and storytelling skills
Identify key landmarks and histories of policing, prisons and surveillance in NYC
Understand the value of public history
Deepen appreciation for and commitment to social justice

Over the course of three weeks, participants learned how to conduct research, how to utilize documents and materials at NYC archives and libraries, and, ultimately, how to tell stories about carceral histories by developing their own walking tours. Based on participant feedback, the experience was affirming, generative, and intellectually stimulating.

About the YPHI Team

Mariame Kaba

Mariame Kaba is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots abolitionist organization focused on ending youth incarceration, and co-leads the initiative Interrupting Criminalization with fellow organizer Andrea J. Ritchie. Kaba is the author of the New York Times Bestseller We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Books, 2021), among several other titles that offer support and tools for repair, transformation, and moving toward a future without incarceration and policing.

Zahra Khan, YPHI Coordinator

Zahra Khan (she/her) is an educator and editor whose work emerges at the intersection of narrative, healing and disability justice, and liberation pedagogy. Her research, writing, and community engagement focuses on shifting consciousness in medical education toward abolitionist possibilities. Zahra enjoys facilitating spaces that cultivate critical consciousness, earnest reflection, and collective care. She currently teaches in the graduate program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University and at CUNY School of Medicine.

Sarah Cuk

Sarah Cuk is an information organizer and researcher focused on archives, local histories, prison abolition, and music. She received a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Texas at Austin in 2015 and a Master of Science in Library and Information Sciences from Pratt Institute in 2022. Sarah has worked in cultural heritage since 2014 at numerous places including the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, Pratt Institute Libraries, and the Digital Preservation Outreach and Education Network. Her research focuses on the intersections of power production, surveillance, and policing within libraries and archives, specifically in the New York metropolitan area. She currently works as a Digitization Technician at the NYC Municipal Archives and as a research consultant and cataloger for Project NIA.

Tia Poquette, Documenter

Tia Poquette (she/her/hers) is a third-year student in Syracuse University’s Maxwell School studying public policy with a double minor in architecture and sociology. She’s currently a research fellow with the Lender Center for Social Justice studying the impact of the War on Terror and how policies and news coverage rationalized and enabled ethnic and racial discrimination. She loves reading nonfiction, video games, and playing with her dog, Max!

Kei Williams

Kei Williams (they/them) is a queer transmasculine organizer, artist, and historian. A founding member of Black Lives Matter New York City, the aim of Kei’s work is to transform global culture from the individual into a systemic analysis of structural oppression. They use decentralization as a framework to approach their organizing, relationships, and political theory of change. Kei joined Black Gotham Experience in November 2016, a visual storytelling project elevating the impact of the African Diaspora by remembering together through walks, talks, and artistic commissions. Outside of work, Kei is a homebody kept company by their dog Spartacus and their dozen inherited plants. Follow Kei at @blackboikei on Twitter and IG.

YPHI Supporters

Thank you to supporters who made the Youth Public History Institute possible.
Sarah Cuk
Kei Williams
Fatima Koli, Barnard College
Hugh Ryan
Vanessa K. Valdés, City College of New York
Genevieve Wagner, Municipal Art Society of New York
Librarians and Archivists at the Municipal Archives & New York Public Library (NYPL)
Mellon Foundation
Project NIA’s individual donors

Questions about YPHI? Please email [email protected].