Welcome to the UZURI Project

People Helping Others Excel By Example (P.H.O.E.B.E.) began in 1997 as The Uzuri Project, a temporary Black history project about African Americans in the Hot Springs community.  Founded by five Hot Springs local citizens, this small group began to accumulate the photographs and oral history.  It was evident that the records had to go on permanent display.  Now The Uzuri Project is a continuing endeavor within P.H.O.E.B.E. including over 1,500 donated photographs, artifacts and documents.  P.H.O.E.B.E. brings together memories from the community's history that reveal a variety of stories about colorful people, places and events.  The exhibits do not present the complete history of the African American experience in Hot Springs, but does present a few chapters from a very complex story.

Our Present and Future Generations

Under the direction of the parent organization P.H.O.E.B.E., The Uzuri Project Youth Leadership Institute is a combined group of teenagers ages of 12 to 18 years old that actively practice the Six Principles of Nonviolence  of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Our Mission

Through the preservation and understanding of African American heritage and cultural resources documented by our youth and senior adults create economic and community development in Hot Springs National Park (Garland County) Arkansas.

The Uzuri Project (oo soo ree, Swahili for beauty) is a Black History Community Program and was created to help fulfill the mission of P.H.O.E.B.E. by identifying, collecting, documenting, recording, interpreting, displaying, researching and preserving cultural and historic resources relevant to the African American experience.

Our Vision

Through its interpretive program, archival collections and filming of oral histories P.H.O.E.B.E./The Uzuri Project seeks to create an understanding of the past and preserve the history, space and the buildings, of African Americans in Hot Springs National Park/Garland County, Arkansas.  It is the desire of P.H.O.E.B.E. to partner with other organizations of the community for the restoration of the neighborhood including the Pleasant Street Historic District for a livable neighborhood and the development of a museum/gallery to house the archival memorabilia collected.