For all of the wonderful celebrations that happen during Black History Month, the 28 days also serve as a reminder of how much history has been lost — how much black Americans don’t know about their origins, how many contributions have been covered up, how many unsung heroes lie in unmarked graves.

Thanks to technology, we’re starting to learn more about lost narratives and forgotten people — DNA tests trace ancestry, community-sourced websites gather information and people like Emily Kutil actively work to exhume the buried.

A citizen of Detroit, Kutil has a plan to recreate the Motor City’s long-demolished black mini-metropolis, once called the Black Bottom, online according to the Detroit Free Press.

An architect and historian, Kutil discovered a cache of 800 photographs taken of the Black Bottom in the 1949 and 1950 archived in the Detroit Public Library’s Burton Historical Collection while doing research about Detroit’s Hastings Street.

The pictures were commissioned by the city government; officials wanted to use eminent domain to seize all of the land in the area for a massive redevelopment scheme. First, however, all existing properties had to be appraised so that their owners could be properly compensated.