Over the last four years, I have worked as a lecturer teaching courses about Baltimore and African American history, and I have also served as the project manager for the Diaspora Pathways Archival Access Project (DPAAP), a partnership between Johns Hopkins University and the Afro-American Newspapers funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These experiences have shown me that students learn best when they are not simply taught history, but when they also act as historians. Baltimore offers both possibilities and challenges for students doing historical projects. Much of the city’s history remains unwritten, and historical materials are often tucked away in small archives and private homes. Records that are not easily accessible present a special problem for students who are constrained by time and transportation. Both the East Baltimore Oral History Project and the Afro Archives partnership seek to address these challenges by involving students in the process of uncovering, describing, and making accessible historical records, and then encouraging students to use these resources for historical research. 