Staff

Sumayya Ahmed, Ph.D., Executive Director

Sumayya Ahmed joined the Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC) and the University of Chicago Library as Executive Director of the BMRC in January, 2024. Sumayya provides strategic leadership and operational management for the BMRC’s programs and outreach. (Read about work Sumayya planned and directed in her first year at the BMRC here.)

Prior to joining the BMRC, Sumayya was an Assistant Professor in the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University in Boston. As an archives educator and scholar, she taught graduate courses in Archival Studies for students pursuing the MLIS degree at Simmons and, before that, at University College London’s global campus in Doha, Qatar. A grandchild of the Great Migration, born in Chicago, Sumayya earned her PhD in Information Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and a BA in African American Studies and Sociology from Wesleyan University.

A member of the Society of American Archivists, Ahmed serves on the Archival Education and Research Initiative board, the Advisory Board for the School of Information Studies at Dominican University, and the Center for African Mediterranean Studies (CAMS) at Arizona State University. She is the co-editor of the Routledge Studies in Archives Series and publishes on archives and society in North Africa and race and equity within the library, archives, and museum sector.

Allison Sutton, Program Manager

Allison Sutton joined the BMRC in May 2020. In this role, she serves as the primary lead for the educational programming and initiatives, primarily the Archie Motley Archival Internship Program and the Summer Short-term Fellowship Program. She also works with Northwestern University's Office of Civic Engagement as a partner for the Black Metropolis Graduate Assistantship program, now in its second year. During the summer of 2022, Allison helped to pilot "Tools for Exploration & Sharing Chicago’s African American Archival Gems" a program bringing together history scholars and archivists with Chicago Public School history teachers looking to help their students understand the importance of archival collections to historical research. The program is on pause this year but will resume in the summer of 2024. Additionally, Allison is also responsible for the BMRC's principal communication tools, the monthly e-newsletter, the website, social media activity, and the management of the daily operations for the consortium.

Before joining the BMRC, Allison enjoyed working in diverse roles within higher education. Most recently, I was a Student Success Center team member at Loyola University New Orleans. Allison spent nearly a decade as the Psychology & Social Work Subject Specialist Librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Collection development, instruction, and outreach were crucial responsibilities in this role. Also actively engaged in research, Allison focused on African American library education history. The centerpiece of her work was a journal article about the Negro Teacher-Librarian Training Program, a little-known library training program in the early 20th century that had a significant impact on the diversification of the field of library education. In her last two years at the University of Illinois, Allison worked on the early phase of a newly added manuscript collection ⠀Shozō Satō Papers and a digitization project to preserve the highly sought-after "Project 500" archival records, a late 1960s program created to recruit Black students. Allison's first position in the academic library world was as a Library Associate at the Camille Stivers Shade Black Heritage Collection at Southern University Baton Rouge, LA. She was simultaneously a graduate student working on a Master’s in Library and Information Science from Louisiana State University. Allison was awarded a Spectrum Scholarship from the American Library Association during this time. She was among the first graduate students selected to receive a diversity scholarship (currently titled Kaleidoscope Scholarship Program) through the Association of Research Libraries (ARL.) Later, Allison was chosen for the ARL's Leadership & Career Development Program and continued volunteering with ARL and the ALA in presenting diversity & recruitment programming.

When not working, Allison enjoys cooking, walking, reading, watching documentaries, listening to jazz, blues, classic R&B, yacht rock, Louisiana zydeco, and connecting with family and friends.

Rashieda Witter, Black Visual Arts Researcher

Rashieda Witter joined the BMRC in November 2024 as the BMRC Black Visual Arts Researcher. Rashieda is an art historian and cultural caretaker who came to the BMRC from the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC) where she was the curatorial assistant for the “Elizabeth Catlett: A Black Revolutionary Artist” exhibition. As the Black Visual Arts Researcher, Rashieda surveys and documents Black visual arts archival records located in BMRC member collections, manages outreach activities to encourage the use of the materials by artists and creatives, and will develop a public-facing independent project.

Originally from Orlando, Florida, she is passionate about shaping the future of art history. Her work focuses on the visual and sonic culture of the African Diaspora, Black feminism, and the dynamic intersection of art and liberation. Through her research and curation, she aims to amplify underrepresented voices and explore the transformative power of art in social justice. Rashieda earned her MA and Honors degree in Art History at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, she has also previously held curatorial positions at the Philips Collection (Washington, DC) and the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American History & Culture (Baltimore, MD).

Tolu Balogun, Postdoctoral Fellow in Community Archives

The BMRC is pleased to welcome Tolu Balogun as its Postdoctoral Fellow in Community Archives. Tolu brings extensive experience in records and archives management, having previously worked with several international organizations including at the United Nations. Tolu holds doctoral and master’s degrees in records and archives management from the University of Zululand, South Africa and the University of Ghana.

As BMRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Community Archives, Tolu supports and helps manage the Mellon Foundation funded BMRC-FOCAS project that works to empower community archives, diversify the field of archives, and make accessible the history of Black Chicago through paid graduate student internships at local community archives. He is a resource on archival practice for student interns and community archives, will work to produce and publish research on the BMRC FOCAS project, and support the incorporation of documentation generated from the grant project into the BMRC Archives Portal.

Former Staff

Marcia Walker-McWilliams, Ph.D., Executive Director
Laurie Lee Moses, Portal Archivist
Jehoiada Calvin, Community Engagement Archivist
Andrea Jackson Gavin, Executive Director
Anita Mechler, Program Manager/Archivist
Camille Brewer, Executive Director
Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty, Archivist and Executive Director
Lisa Calahan, Lead Surveyor and Archivist for Survey Initiative
& Project Director and Archivist for Color Curtain Processing Project
Bergis Jules, Project Director and Archivist for Survey Initiative
Vera Davis, Executive Director