RICHES Projects:
UCF Community Veterans History Project
Created in the fall of 2010, the Community Veterans History Project (CVHP) honors American war veterans by giving them the opportunity to share their stories. The histories of our wars will not be complete without the voices of those who were involved.
CVHP is committed to serving the Central Florida veteran community by digitally preserving their stories for future generations. Over 600 Central Florida veterans have participated in the project by sharing and archiving their experiences.
The UCF CVHP is a Regional Initiative for Collecting the History, Experiences and Stories (RICHES) Project.
Sanford Herald Digital Archive
The Sanford Herald Digital Archive is a free online repository providing access to nearly a century of Sanford Herald newspapers, preserving the history of Sanford and Seminole County, Florida. Developed through a collaboration among the University of Central Florida, RICHES, local museums, historical societies, and community partners, the archive contains more than 22,800 digitized newspaper issues published between 1908 and 2005. Using optical character recognition (OCR), the collection is keyword searchable, making it a valuable resource for historical research, genealogy, public history, and the study of Central Florida’s social, political, economic, and cultural development.
Exhibits
Exhibits are curated digital presentations that bring together materials from the RICHES collections to explore specific people, places, events, and themes from Central Florida’s history. By combining photographs, documents, oral histories, and interpretive text, these exhibits provide historical context and create engaging learning experiences for researchers, educators, students, and the broader community. RICHES has two types of exhibits: smaller exhibits based in the Omeka database and larger interactive exhibits in their own digital space called Bending Toward Justice.
RICHES Collaborations with Community Projects:
The Georgetown Steering Team is a community-driven organization dedicated to preserving, promoting, and celebrating the rich history and cultural heritage of Georgetown, Sanford’s historic African American neighborhood. Through historic preservation, educational initiatives, oral histories, community events, and partnerships with local organizations and institutions, the team works to ensure that Georgetown’s stories and legacy are documented and shared with future generations. Its efforts have included supporting the recognition of the Georgetown Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, organizing Florida Emancipation Day celebrations and History Harvests, and creating opportunities for residents to contribute their own memories and experiences to the historical record.
Historic Oviedo Colored Schools Museum
The Historic Oviedo Colored Schools Museum is dedicated to preserving and sharing the history of African American education in Oviedo and the surrounding communities during the era of segregation. Through photographs, artifacts, documents, and the memories of former students and residents, the museum highlights the determination of African American families and educators who worked to provide educational opportunities despite significant social and institutional barriers. The organization documents several historic area schools, including Oviedo Colored Elementary School, Gabriella (Jamestown), Geneva, Kolokee (Snowhill), and Jackson Heights, while working to restore the historic Gabriella Colored School as a permanent museum and community resource.
Celery Soup: Florida’s Folk Life Play was a community theater project created to preserve and share the history and stories of Sanford, Florida. Developed from the memories and oral histories of local residents, its productions brought Sanford’s past to life through stories about the people, places, industries, and events that shaped the community. Managed by the nonprofit Creative Sanford, Inc., Celery Soup used local performers and community participation to explore subjects ranging from Sanford’s historic celery industry and the devastating freezes of the 1890s to the closing of Naval Air Station Sanford and other periods of change in the city’s history.
Orlando Family Stage Archival Digitization
In celebration of its 100th anniversary in 2026, Orlando Family Stage partnered with the University of Central Florida’s Department of History and RICHES to preserve and share the theatre’s century-long history. Founded in 1926, Orlando Family Stage has played an important role in Central Florida’s cultural and performing arts community and has maintained a longstanding partnership with UCF. As part of the centennial project, historical photographs, programs, documents, and other archival materials were digitized and added to the RICHES Mosaic Interface, creating an accessible digital collection that preserves the organization’s legacy for students, families, researchers, and future generations.
Halifax Museum Map Digitization
The Halifax Historical Museum in Daytona Beach preserves and shares the history of Daytona Beach and the surrounding Halifax area through historic artifacts, photographs, documents, exhibits, and educational programs. Operated by the Halifax Historical Society, whose roots date to 1933, the museum explores local history ranging from early settlement and pioneer life to tourism, beach culture, civil rights, local industry, and Daytona’s celebrated motorsports heritage. Since 1986, the museum has been housed in the historic 1910 Merchants Bank building on South Beach Street, making the building itself an important part of the community’s history.
LGBT History Museum of Central Florida
The mission of the LGBTQ History Museum of Central Florida, Inc. is to collect, preserve and exhibit the history of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender community in Central Florida. We are dedicated to collecting and preserving memorabilia, providing a documentary record for research, and displaying with pride that community’s social and historical contributions, so our legacy will always be remembered.
RICHES Collaborations with Academic Projects:
The University of Central Florida’s Public History program under Dr. Scot French connects historical scholarship with community engagement through hands-on research, digital humanities, and collaborative public projects. Students gain practical experience by working with museums, archives, historic preservation initiatives, oral history projects, digital archives, and community organizations while applying historical methods to real-world audiences. Through internships, faculty-led partnerships, and innovative digital technologies, the program prepares students for careers in public history, cultural heritage, museums, archives, historic preservation, and related fields.
Podcasts
RICHES Podcast Documentaries
Robert Cassanello, Associate Professor of History from the University of Central Florida, produced a 58-episode series of podcasts about the history of Central Florida. Students from the UCF Public History program produced individual episodes on a variety of subjects with cooperation from local area partners, which are available on the RICHES YouTube page and RICHES MI.
A History of Central Florida
A History of Central Florida Podcast is a 50-episode podcast that examines the history of Central Florida through local area objects found in museums, historical organizations and other places. The series was produced by Robert Cassanello, Associate Professor of History from the University of Central Florida. The episodes are available on the RICHES YouTube page, UCF STARS, and RICHES MI.
The University of Central Florida’s participation in the National Cemetery Administration’s Veterans Legacy Program is a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs–funded initiative that preserves and shares the stories of veterans buried in national cemeteries through historical research, digital resources, and educational programming. UCF faculty, students, and Florida K–12 educators collaborate to research veterans’ lives, create online biographies, and develop interactive curriculum materials. The program also includes annual field trips to national cemeteries, where students and community members commemorate veterans while learning about American history.
Florida-France Soldier Stories Project
The Florida-France Soldier Stories Project seeks to tell the stories of the Florida soldiers buried in the American Battle Monuments Commission cemeteries in France. Our goal is to honor and commemorate the brave individuals who gave their lives supporting the Allied forces, liberating France, and defeating Germany in the Second World War. Simultaneously, our goal is to teach the students who participate in this research project about the history of France and Florida during World War II, about the history of individual servicemen, and about how to implement historical research methods in their work.
As part of the Special Collections and University Archives Collection Department of UCF’s Library, the Home Movie Archive seeks to collect 8 mm, Super 8 mm, and 16 mm home movies, captured mostly from late 1940s through the end of the 1970s, which have cultural, historical, scientific, or artistic significance, with a focus on Central Florida and its residents.
The aim of creating a Home Movie Archive is to ensure that the valuable social and historical information, captured by ordinary citizens, be preserved as part of the Special Collections and University Archives permanent holdings-a non-circulating collection whose use is confined to the Special Collections reading/research room.
The UCF Libraries will administer, permanently house, preserve, inventory, process, maintain, and make available a Home Movie Archive to the public, researchers, and scholars, in accordance with the UCF Libraries’ established policies and procedures.
Independent Projects:
Documentary Films
2022 I, Too: A Documentary Film from the Mind of Carole Anderson
I, Too is a 63-minute documentary conceived and narrated by Dr. Carol Anderson, Emory University professor and best-selling author, directed by Tom Glynn, and co-produced by the Bertelsmann Foundation and Humanity in Action. Released in September 2022, the film examines the long history of racially motivated political violence and white supremacy in the United States, connecting past events to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
2020 The Ocoee Massacre: The Truth Laid Bare
The Ocoee Massacre: The Truth Laid Bare is a short documentary produced by the University of Central Florida (UCF) that explores the tragic events of November 2, 1920, in Ocoee, Florida. The film highlights oral histories, historical records like census lists, and smuggled letters to bring light to the bloodiest day in modern American political history.
2016 Filthy Dreamers
Filthy Dreamers is a documentary created through the University of Central Florida’s Burnett Honors College Advanced Documentary Workshop and directed by Dr. Robert Cassanello and Dr. Lisa Mills. The film explores the Florida Purity League’s 1920s campaign against the Florida State College for Women, examining efforts to ban the teaching of evolution and psychoanalysis while stigmatizing dissenting educators and students as “Filthy Dreamers”; it received a College Television Emmy Award and the Best Student Film Award at the 2020 Ogeechee International History Film Festival and is available through educational platforms including PBS LearningMedia.
2012 The Committee
The Committee, a documentary produced by faculty and students from the UCF History department and UCF School of Visual Art and Design (SVAD), in partnership with the Burnett Honors College and the UCF Center for Distributed Learning (CDL), was honored with an Emmy Award in the “Documentary – Historical” category.
The documentary chronicles how the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (a.k.a. “The Johns Committee”) persecuted LGBTQ communities throughout Florida in the 1950s and ’60s, and how some of the effects of the committee’s subversive activities are still felt today. The film was produced and directed by Dr. Robert Cassanello and Dr. Lisa Mills.
2010 Shadows of the Past, Reflections for the Future
“Shadows” shares the story of activists Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore, their fight for civil rights for African Americans in the 1940s, and how the Moore legacy lives on, nearly sixty years after they were murdered. The film was produced and directed by Dr. Robert Cassanello and Dr. Lisa Mills.