Only a couple of years ago, the Black Archives of Mid-America faced the real possibility of fading away.</p><p>Struggling with maintenance costs, an inactive board and the loss of city funding, the Black Archives was in desperate need of fresh leadership and private funding.</p><p>Now with that new leadership and a renewed commitment, the archives is making major strides toward reopening next spring.</p><p>At a recent meeting, the board approved a memorandum of understanding with the Kansas City Public Library. The agreement will allow the archives to continue to own its collection and lease the property that it will occupy near 17th Terrace and John &#8220;Buck&#8221; O&#8217;Neil Way in the 18th and Vine Jazz District. The agreement will allow the library to handle most operational matters.</p><p>&#8220;Clearly, the MOU (agreement) is going to be of great benefit to the archives because at this point, we don&#8217;t have a full-time staff,&#8221; said board chairwoman Barbara Peterson, widow of Horace M. Peterson, the founder of the archives. &#8220;At the same time, it will be a great benefit to the Kansas City Public Library. It will allow them to expand their constituency. It will bring more people to the programming that we do jointly.&#8221;</p><p>In 2007, the new board and the library collaborated to hold a dinner in honor of historian and writer John Hope Franklin. The money raised from that event is now called the archives&#8217; John Hope Franklin Fund, money that is set aside for operational expenses. The plan is to make the dinner an annual fundraiser.</p><p>The agreement covers the staff and IT resources to be provided by the library but paid for using the fund.</p><p>&#8220;The library will give us staff to help with the collection maintenance and people that can respond to questions related to the collection,&#8221; Peterson said.</p><p>The agreement also allows the library to expand some of its services into the same building.</p><p>R. Crosby Kemper III, the chief executive of the Kansas City Public Library, said everyone wins under the agreement.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s great,&#8221; Kemper said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a plan for mutual benefit for the archives and the library. The community in particular benefits.&#8221;</p><p>Kemper likened the partnership to the Denver Public Library&#8217;s Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library.</p><p>&#8220;The one big difference is the community through the archives board will continue to own it,&#8221; Kemper said. &#8220;The library will play an operating role. The community in a sense will actually own the heritage. It&#8217;s a unique and good experiment, which will create good will all the way around.&#8221;</p><p>If everything goes well, Peterson and Kemper are confident the facility could be open as early as March 2009.</p><p>The rebirth will show how much Kansas City values its history and will demonstrate what this community can accomplish when it crosses racial and territorial lines to work together. And it will demonstrate that Kansas City doesn&#8217;t always need city government to step in and solve every problem.