Student kudos!

Kudos to… Irma Guzman (MSP23) is a Research Project Manager for the 1968-1969 Detroit Black Power Murals Research Project. This project focuses on community engagement efforts in Detroit, archival research, and oral histories, and the work will culminate in a public history website. From this work, Irma is also supporting the nomination of stained glass windows to the Michigan Stained Glass Census on behalf of Grace Episcopal Church. The church contains stained glass windows by the Douglas Phillips Studio, the only known Black stained glass artist to have been working in the US from the 1950s-1970s. An extension of this work is also an evolving collaboration with Dr. Kelli Morgan – Black Artists Archive Founder, the City of Detroit Historical Advisory Board, and Eastern Market Corporation – to preserve and reactivate a Black Arts Mural from 1979 that was painted in an Elementary School by multiple leading artists of the Black Arts Movement. Irma is also a co-founder for Detroit VOCES Collective working on an oral history project to document and celebrate the histories, legacies and contributions of Latinos in Detroit. Irma also completed the research and marker text for a State of Michigan Historical Marker that will be finalized and installed later this year for Dr. Lucile Cruz Gajec, a critical community organizer in Detroit’s Mexican/Latino community and founder of Museo Indigenista- Museum of Indohispanic History & Culture.