Pixel Acuity, Digital Transitions services division, has accumulated over half a century of hands-on experience digitizing cultural heritage in all its forms, from renowned collections both large and small. This deep expertise is reflected in our next-generation proprietary workflow software, which leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and a multivariate processing pipeline to deliver best-in-class optical character reading, metadata and deliverables.
Over the last several months Digital Transitions has partnered with The HistoryMakers to leverage this technology as well as DT Heritage digitization hardware to preserve the various materials, including photographs, scrapbooks, letters, speeches, and other historically relevant documents that highlight and contextualize a person’s life and career. The HistoryMakers is the foremost keeper of the country’s African American oral history and culture and has interviewed almost 3,400 African American leaders. Their collection offers the most extensive effort to record the Black experience since the WPA Slave Narratives of the 1930s and helps refashion a more inclusive record of American history. The urgent need to salvage endangered primary materials across the country created this project and will expose significant aspects of twentieth Century African American history currently missing from the historical record.
Photograph of Etta Moten Barnett courtesy of The HistoryMakers
Pixel Acuity has now completed the first collection in this effort which preserved the historical record of Etta Motten Barnett’s career. Etta Moten Barnett was an African American singer and actress known for her legendary roles in Sugar Hill (1931) and Porgy and Bess (1942) on Broadway as well as in the film Flying Down to Rio (1933) and in many other notable theatrical performances. Along with her husband Claude Barnett, founder of the Associated Negro Press, Etta Moten was involved in many philanthropic efforts in the United States and Africa and served as a pillar of her community.
