From 2005 and 2007, Ingrid Drake coordinated the Ivy City Oral History Project, in collaboration with the youth of Ivy City Achievers. She interviewed and supervised interviews with residents of the Ivy City neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The project was part of a larger initiative of Empower D.C., a grassroots nonprofit in D.C., called the Ivy City Neighborhood and Oral History Project, which began in 2004. The larger initiative arose from a plan to preserve Alexander Crummell School in the Ivy City neighborhood. Empower D.C. received funding for their efforts to document Ivy City's history from the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C. The resulting interviews were published in Ivy City Neighborhood and Oral History Project Booklet, an Empower D.C. project.
Additionally, Ingrid Drake produced a radio show for WPFW 89.3 FM of the final interviews. The interviewees discuss a history of black migration to Ivy City from the South, work histories, Ivy City memories, neighborhood churches, Sparrow's Beach (a private beach in Annapolis, Maryland for black vacationers during the Jim Crow Era of racial segregation, Alexander Crummell Elementary School, the 1968 D.C. uprising, neighborhood changes over time, drug use in the 1970s, Ivy City activism, gentrification, housing advocacy, Empower D.C., and the future of Ivy City.

The Ivy City Oral History Project collection is comprised of 23 audio CDs (21 CDs of interviews of 24 people, plus one CD of transcripts in the form of 16 Word [97-2003 version] documents of 19 interviews, and one CD of the final radio show), and 11 color 4"x6" photographs of 13 of the 24 interviewees. There are no transcripts for some interviewees. The radio show contains snippets of interviews interwoven with popular commercially-recorded music. Interviewed are 24 people: Aaron Aylor, Charles H. Brown, Alfred Coates, Theodore Coates, Clifford Coulson, Lula "Jackie" Council, Erica Crews, Okia Ferguson, Remetter Freeman, Dorothy "Nicey" Gary, Eleanor Grant, Sarah Parker Hunter, Marjorie Jones, Aujeneah Milner, Joel McPherson, Mohammed Mobaidin, Parisa Norouzi, Audrey Ray, Margaret Rice, Elaine Smith, Kenneth Tapscott, Romaine Thomas, Charlotte Tyner and Daisy Wroten.