The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recently awarded a $4.4 million grant to a team of scholars at Johns Hopkins University that is investigating the history of academic racism in higher education and building a citywide network to preserve Baltimore’s Black history, culture, and arts.

The project, Inheritance Baltimore: Humanities and Arts Education for Black Liberation, will pioneer methods of instruction, research, preservation, and doctoral education that works with Black institutions to bring the experiences of Baltimore’s Black community to the fore and combat institutional racism. The project will also document and preserve the ways Black people attained knowledge within and outside of academic disciplines. The project is a collaboration between the Billie Holiday Project for Liberation Arts, the Program in Racism, Immigration and Citizenship; and the Sheridan Libraries and University Museums.