Father and Daughter Launch Archive of 600 Videos on African American History

Dean Radcliffe-Lynes and his daughter Olivia launched The Society of African American Narratives, a project to gather and preserve nonfiction video about African American history and culture. The idea took shape two years ago, when Olivia, then a child who had tagged along on her father's shoots, asked him what he wanted his legacy to be.

The Baltimore County-based organization opens its Content Hub on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. The site will list more than 600 titles, searchable by title or subject, with links to videos hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, PBS, Netflix, Hulu and other platforms. Membership is free, and listings are organized alphabetically and by category.

Radcliffe-Lynes said he chose video because of how his daughter engaged with history. "Olivia is a visual learner," he said, adding that watching documentaries and interviews rather than text showed him how many young people take in the past.

The launch comes as books about African Americans are being pulled from shelves and content is being removed from cultural organizations and government institutions. The archive is meant to give young people in particular a place to find primary accounts of African American history and to place those accounts within American history.

Anyone can submit a title for the collection, so the archive grows through the people who know which stories have not yet been told or told well. Alongside the Hub, TSAAN is building a Storytelling Empowerment program that gives young creatives support to research and pitch untold stories and turn them into short documentaries. The organization will also work with families and groups that want to document their own histories.

A Reel Conversations initiative will pair community organizations with public screenings followed by discussion. An Education Toolkit for teachers, homeschooling families and others who work with young people is planned as well.

The society's name traces to a conversation between father and daughter about legacy. Radcliffe-Lynes said he concluded the answer was never about his name. "It was about making sure our stories outlive us," he said.