The Black Elyria Project: Part I

MEDIA MAKE CHANGE in partnership with Elyria Black Legacy Connection introduces a new video series featuring stories from Black residents of Elyria, Ohio. Elyria Black Legacy Connection is a community organization that focuses on preserving the legacies of Black communities in Elyria, Ohio through multimedia storytelling. Elyria, Ohio is a city located on the southwest side of Cleveland, Ohio and is home to generations of Black Americans whose ancestors migrated during The Great Migration.

The Black Elyria Project is a public resource and visual documentary that chronicles and celebrates the history of Black People in Elyria, Ohio.

We’re currently looking for participants to interview for the documentary! Learn more and sign up HERE.

Goals:

to raise awareness about the unique lived experiences and overlooked contributions of Black Elyrians, past and present.
to serve as an accessible storytelling tool for multiracial community engagement in Elyria.
to produce a public document in the form of a visual love letter to Black Elyrians, highlighting their memories, milestones, and hopes for the future.

In The News

“Tara Conley, founder of Media Make Change and producer of the video interviews the group is set to release, hosted the panel discussion, with her mother, Brenda Arnold-Conley, as one of the speakers […] Conley asked panelists Saturday — and it was a question during the video interviews — if they remembered nights of protests and unrest after the death of Daryl Maxwell, who was shot and killed by police in 1975.” (Feb 2024)

— READ MORE @TheChronicle

“Conley, an Elyria native, founded Media Make Change in 2009 in developing documentary projects centered on social justice and equity […] Her family heritage runs deep in the city and Conley said the goals for the project are to raise awareness about the unique lived experiences of Black Elyrians as well as serving as an accessible storytelling tool for multiracial community engagement and to turn the material into a public resource document as a ‘visual love letter to Black Elyrians.’” (June 2022).