FAQ

Vision Statement

The Baltimore Legacy Project envisions a city where the wisdom, struggles, and achievements of past generations guide the decisions of the present and inspire the leaders of the future. By preserving and sharing Baltimore’s cultural memory, we aim to foster a sense of intergenerational accountability; honoring the sacrifices of those who came before while empowering the next generation to build a more just, informed, and connected Baltimore.

Mission Statement

The Baltimore Legacy Project is dedicated to documenting and preserving the stories, experiences, and reflections of Baltimore’s elders and community leaders through a documentary interview series. By capturing the voices of those who witnessed and shaped the city’s transformation, BLP provides a socio-historical and cultural foundation that informs present-day understanding and inspires future leadership. Through storytelling rooted in lived experience, the project connects generations, uses history as a tool for social change, uplifts community voices, and sparks dialogue and action in Baltimore and beyond.

Foster intergenerational accountability and connection:
The goal is for viewers to feel a connection to the past and a sense of responsibility to the future. Each installment aims to evoke a sense of intergenerational accountability, where the actions and struggles of ancestors are recognized and the needs of future generations are considered. To create a bridge between generations, honoring past struggles while equipping current and future leaders with the knowledge and inspiration to carry the work forward. This includes emphasizing shared responsibility across time.

Use History as a Resource for Social Change
To encourage viewers to see history not just as something to reference but as an instructive tool for present-day activism and future planning. The docuseries seeks to spark a “family meeting” on what we’ve learned and what we still need to do.

Center Community Analysis, Theories and Lived Experience
To uplift the insights of everyday people; especially youth, clergy, educators, and community organizers who have historically been overlooked but are central to the city’s resilience and collective memory.

Inspire Local and National Solidarity and Action
To ignite conversations, build connections, and inspire action both within Baltimore and in other cities grappling with similar histories of state violence, injustice, and community-led healing.

At its core, the Baltimore Legacy Project (BLP) is a cultural memory intervention that restores, democratizes, and mobilizes Black Baltimore’s socio-historical knowledge. By centering the analysis of lived experiences, and community-defined narratives. BLP counters epistemicide, strengthens intergenerational accountability, and transforms history from a static reference into a usable resource for leadership, policy, and collective healing. BLP’s impact extends across individual, community, institutional, and civic stakeholders, creating layered benefits that reinforce one another.

The Baltimore Legacy Project (BLP) is a cultural and civic initiative that restores historical memory, reclaims narrative power, and strengthens the social fabric of Baltimore by documenting the lived experiences of Black elders, movement leaders, and community residents. At its core, BLP functions as a living archive, preserving first-hand accounts of Baltimore’s social, political, and cultural history while making that knowledge accessible to the communities that produced it.

For Black elders and culture bearers, BLP restores voice, dignity, and authorship in the historical record. Rather than positioning elders as distant symbols of the past, the project recognizes them as knowledge producers and civic architects whose lived experiences provide critical insight into the city’s development. By documenting their contributions as primary historical testimony, BLP interrupts the long-standing exclusion of Black elders from official narratives and ensures their leadership and wisdom remain publicly accessible for future generations.

For youth and emerging leaders; including students, organizers, and cultural workers, the project offers a grounded socio-historical context that strengthens identity formation, civic confidence, and political education. Through direct engagement with elders’ experiences, younger generations gain real-world examples of coalition building, movement lawyering, and community organizing. This intergenerational exchange equips young leaders with the strategic insight necessary to lead with accountability and cultural grounding.

For Baltimore residents and neighborhood communities, BLP fosters collective healing and narrative ownership. By challenging deficit-based portrayals of the city and highlighting the dignity, complexity, and resilience of its people, the project creates shared spaces for reflection and dialogue through screenings, public discussions, and community engagement. In doing so, it validates everyday residents as historical actors and strengthens community cohesion through shared memory and truth-telling.

The project also serves movement organizations, advocates, and cultural workers by documenting and preserving decades of organizing infrastructure. BLP archives the strategies, relationships, and lessons that have shaped Baltimore’s civic landscape, ensuring that vital movement knowledge is not lost or distorted over time. This historical record strengthens cross-generational learning and provides future organizers with a foundation to build upon rather than starting from scratch.

Educational institutions benefit from BLP as a community-grounded pedagogical resource. The project bridges academic research and lived experience, offering locally relevant materials that support culturally responsive teaching and public scholarship. By elevating community knowledge alongside academic analysis, BLP challenges traditional hierarchies around who produces knowledge and expands what counts as legitimate historical documentation.

For policymakers and civic leaders, BLP provides context-rich insight into how communities experience governance, crisis, and institutional decision-making. The project humanizes policy outcomes by documenting community responses to policing, public leadership, and the aftermath of the 2015 uprising. These narratives offer a critical lens for developing policies rooted in historical accountability and community trust.

Anchor institutions and philanthropic funders gain a credible model for place-based cultural investment. BLP demonstrates measurable public demand for community-centered storytelling while aligning arts, research, and social impact. Its structure offers a replicable framework for other cities seeking to address historical erasure and strengthen civic engagement through cultural infrastructure.

Collectively, the Baltimore Legacy Project restores historical memory where it has been erased, democratizes knowledge traditionally confined to institutions, and builds intergenerational bridges between elders and youth. More than a documentary series, BLP transforms film into applied social science and civic infrastructure reclaiming narrative power for Black Baltimoreans while reshaping how the city understands its past and imagines its future.

Baltimore Still Rising is the powerful first installment of The Baltimore Legacy Project, a documentary series. Baltimore Still Rising gives voice to the people who lived through one of the most pivotal moments in the city’s history. In this debut episode, we hear from 20 Baltimore residents who share their personal stories and first-hand accounts of the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death in 2015, following his tragic encounter with the Baltimore City Police. Through intimate interviews, the documentary captures the raw emotions, frustrations, and resilience that defined the city’s response to the injustice and unrest that followed. Baltimore Still Rising is not just a recount of events—it is a testament to the ongoing fight for justice, the spirit of community, and the hope that, despite the challenges, Baltimore is a city still striving to heal, rebuild, and rise above.

Keywords: Baltimore, uprising, Freddie Gray, police brutality
Length of film: about 90 minutes
Logline: “Beyond the Unrest: A City’s fight for justice.”
Debuted: April 24, 2025
Stage of Release: Now Streaming

Beyond the Wire is a powerful counter-narrative documentary that challenges the long-standing media distortion of Baltimore City; particularly the reductive, harmful image popularized by The Wire. Rather than accept depictions of the city as a hub of violence, drugs, and despair, this film uplifts the truths that mainstream narratives ignore: Baltimore’s enduring legacy of resistance, cultural vibrancy, and neighborhood-based resilience.

Drawing on rich interviews with local organizers, educators, historians, and residents, the documentary exposes the systemic failures, disinvestment, miseducation, and over-policing, that have shaped current social conditions. Yet it refuses to portray Baltimoreans as merely victims. Instead, Beyond the Wire centers Black Baltimore’s grassroots leadership, civic engagement, and self-determination. Viewers hear firsthand how generations of residents have fought back—not only against systemic oppression, but against the erasure of their humanity.

Keywords: Baltimore, The Wire,
Length of film: about 90 minutes
Logline: This Is Baltimore. Fierce. Flawed. Unforgettable."Beyond the Headlines. Beyond the Hype. Beyond the WIRE"
Stage of Release: Scheduled World Premiere June 18th 2026, Baltimore, MD | Scheduled Encore Premiere June 25th 2026, Baltimore MD

Decriminalize Being Young and Black In Baltimore, growing up Black too often means growing up under suspicion. Decriminalizing Being Young and Black takes a critical look at the policies, language, and systems that have shaped the lives of Black youth—where labels like “at-risk,” school discipline practices, and juvenile justice policies converge to produce a culture of over-policing and over-criminalization.

Through the voices of educators, youth advocates, policymakers, and community members, the film interrogates how well-intentioned institutions can unintentionally reinforce harmful narratives of Black inferiority. Examining key policies; from juvenile justice laws to school-based policing. The documentary exposes how structural decisions have helped sustain the school-to-prison pipeline.
But this is not only a story about harm, it is a search for solutions. Centering the knowledge, strengths, and resilience within Baltimore’s communities, the film challenges viewers to rethink how society understands Black youth and asks a powerful question: what would it mean to truly decriminalize being young and Black?

Stage of Production: In Development

A Girl Name Rasheem
A Girl Name Rasheem is a Baltimore-based film production company dedicated to democratizing research, preserving cultural memory, and producing documentary storytelling rooted in Black intellectual and civic traditions. The company was established to anchor and expand the work of the Baltimore Legacy Project (BLP), a long-term oral history and documentary initiative committed to capturing the lived experiences that have shaped Baltimore over the past seventy years.
At the core of A Girl Name Rasheem’s mission is the belief that research should not remain confined to academic institutions. It should be translated, visualized, and returned to the communities from which it emerges. Through documentary film, curated interviews, and public scholarship, the company transforms socio-historical analysis into accessible civic tools.

The Baltimore Legacy Project, its flagship initiative, is a growing archive of in-depth interviews with elder residents, cultural workers, organizers, and policymakers who have witnessed and in many cases shaped, Baltimore’s political and cultural transformation.

Through a docuseries format, BLP weaves personal narrative with structural analysis, illuminating how race, class, gender, policy, and community leadership intersect across decades. The initiative not only documents experience but situates it within broader civic and historical frameworks, offering present and future leaders a socio-historical foundation for informed decision-making.
A Girl Name Rasheem operates at the intersection of scholarship, storytelling, and public engagement. Its work ensures that Baltimore’s cultural memory is preserved with rigor, dignity, and narrative clarity while equipping the next generation with the context necessary to build responsibly on the legacy they inherit.

To showcase Baltimore's deep-rooted history of community activism and for viewers to feel a connection to the past and a sense of responsibility to the future. Each installment aims to evoke a sense of intergenerational accountability, where the actions and struggles of ancestors are recognized and the needs of future generations are considered.

The Baltimore Legacy Project (BLP) has seen clear and measurable success in engaging the community, restoring cultural memory, and creating accessible platforms for storytelling and social change. Three indicators demonstrate that our current strategy is working:

1. Sold-Out Screenings Demonstrate Community Demand
The first installment of the series, Baltimore Still Rising, has already garnered significant public interest, with two sold-out film screenings totalling over 1,000 people in its first month of release. The second installment “Beyond the WIRE” sold out its World Premiere three months before the date of release. These events exceeded capacity and confirmed that Baltimore residents are hungry for opportunities to see their history, voices, and experiences reflected with care, accuracy, and dignity. The sold-out screenings also affirmed that our decision to center Black elders and community voices resonates deeply with local audiences, affirming the project’s mission.

2. Public Access Increases Reach and Equity
In addition to sold-out events, local institutions have sponsored free, open-to-the-public screenings to ensure access for those who may not be able to afford ticketed events.

3. Data Collection for a Community-Centered Report
To ensure that this work not only informs but mobilizes, we implemented a viewer survey during the screenings to collect feedback, reflections, and ideas directly from attendees. The responses ranging from personal stories to policy insights are being compiled into a community report that will inform the next phases of the project and serve as a public resource. This report will deepen community ownership of the process while providing concrete evidence of BLP’s impact and relevance.

It depends on the stage of release. The Baltimore Legacy Project films typically follow the following release schedule:

• World Premiere - Baltimore ALWAYS has to be the first to see each film. So if it is a World Premiere it will always be somewhere in Baltimore City.
• Limited Theatrical release- Screenings in the general Mid-Atlantic Area
• Film Festivals
• Privately Sponsored Screenings -local institutions sponsor free, open-to-the-public screenings to ensure access for those who may not be able to afford ticketed events. These screenings typically create space for intergenerational conversation, reflection, and community learning, reinforcing our belief that history should not be gated behind institutions, but shared in ways that are open, welcoming, and inclusive.
• Digital / Streaming release

At different stages the films have different access points. Join our email list to stay up to date with film stages and other relevant information.

Bubble gum, duck tape and sweat…Well, not actually but it can feel like that. Independent film endeavours with no major corporate backing such as this one pulls resources from multiple places. By far the largest funding sources at the moment are community ticket purchases, locally hosted screening and donations plus the producers own investment. Public support is literally the lifeblood of the Baltimore Legacy Project.

These films are for Baltimore first, but its message extends to any city shaped by struggle and sustained by hope. These documentaries are grounded in the belief that truth-telling is a form of liberation, and that storytelling, when rooted in love and accountability, can be a powerful force for justice.

Support comes in many forms and we appreciate all of them.

• Stay in Community with Us: Follow, like, subscribe, engage, and talk back to us through surveys, questionnaires, and emails.
• Help Us Give Away Free Stuff: Host screenings, read the Baltimore Legacy Project column, and use content from the film and articles in your classroom discussions. Promote.
• Donate: Give your time, talent, or resources in any way that is meaningful.
  • In-Kind: Equipment, location space, images (moving and still), local art, interview time.
  • Funding: No amount is too small. We appreciate every way people choose to give.

What the Baltimore Legacy column ultimately offers is not nostalgia, nor a correction so much as a context. As the country approaches its semiquincentennial, questions of national identity feel newly unsettled. Baltimore’s history suggests that such identity is never forged in the abstract; it is assembled, patiently and imperfectly, at the community level. By linking emerging leaders with the social and cultural foundations laid by those who came before them, the column seeks to strengthen civic memory and to insist on continuity in a moment that often prizes rupture.

At the heart of the column are Baltimore’s elders. Their analysis, measured, sharp, sometimes unresolved, offer a counterpoint to official histories that too often flatten complexity in the pursuit of coherence. Alongside these reflections are first-person accounts of Black Baltimore’s modern past, stories that chronicle not only achievement and resilience but also loss, constraint, and contradiction. Together, they form a record of a community that has endured not by accident, but through intention.

The Baltimore Legacy Project draws on this deep reservoir of memory, pairing archival research with the testimony from Baltimoreans. Its focus is not merely on what happened, but on how it felt, how national movements such as civil rights, political realignment, and economic transformation were absorbed, resisted, and reshaped at the level of neighborhood and family.
To connect archival documents with family narratives is to give history both texture and consequence and to remind readers that the American story, at its most revealing, is still being told.

Sure, below are a few examples of the media coverage.

• https://afro.com/baltimore-still-rising-documentary/
• https://www.wypr.org/show/on-the-record/2025-04-21/baltimore-still-rising-shines-light-on-grass-roots-legacy-during-freddie-gray-uprising
• https://www.wmar2news.com/local/new-independent-docuseries-reflects-on-the-2015-uprisings-after-freddie-grays-death