Michigan Heritage Tracking Advancement Project (MHTAP)
Tracking Advancement: 100 Years of Progress?
Digital Heritage Leadership
Through the Michigan Heritage Tracking Advancement Project, Dr. Denguhlanga Julia Kapilango Divine brought vision, strategy, and innovation to preserve Michigan’s Black history for the digital age. Her leadership ensured that a project rooted in memory could also thrive in technology.
Her Digital Contributions
Building Digital Access: Designed the project website and app, created online forms, and ensured descendants could easily connect with historic archives.
Training Community Historians: Led workshops equipping senior historians, genealogists, and educators with new digital tools for research and storytelling.
Expanding Social Media Presence: Established Facebook, Twitter, and livestream platforms to reach thousands of Michiganders and recruit descendants into the project.
Multimedia Storytelling: Converted archival reports, oral histories, and lectures into films, podcasts, livestreams, and interactive timelines.
Graphic Design & Branding: Produced logos, infographics, and campaign visuals to give the project a cohesive, modern identity.
Outcomes & Impact
Preserved oral testimonies of descendants and community historians.
Created a digital exhibit of the 1915 Michigan Manual of Freedmen’s Progress.
Hosted Facebook Live forums and trainings, making history accessible to new generations.
Built a migration timeline linking post-Civil War history to today’s communities.
Modeled how technology and cultural memory can work together to serve justice.
Dr. Divine’s leadership shows that when heritage, technology, and community empowerment meet, history does not fade — it multiplies.