Readings
In Holly Smith’s “Wholeness Is No Trifling Matter” we learn how to lift Black feminist methodologies from Black feminist archival collections to shape strategies of black feminist archival practice. From the perspective of an archivist and Black Memory Worker this theoretical framework is useful for reparative justice activities in museum, libraries, and other history institutions. Smith provides a historical overview of Spelman College Archives, important archivists and scholars influencing the work, and illustrates how the collections of Audre Lorde and Toni Cade Bambara provide the basis for archival practices based on radical empathy, care, celebration, and repair.
In this multi-authored essay, scholars offer background for using digital technologies to resist dominant narratives in the archives. A working definition of Black Digital Humanities grounds the work and offers a conceptual frame to work from, “a forum for thinking through the ways Black Humanity emerges, submerges, and researches in the digital realm”. While this group’s work began as a way to document community-based activism related to Black Freedom Struggle, this project started with: materials related to the Campaign to bring Mumia Abu Jamal Home. Powered by Inside the Activists’ Studio, this project highlights the archival challenges that arise around the work of Black radicals and how vulnerable they become within systems using traditional western archives.
In this paper, Jennifer DeClue uses the work of Kara Walker to show a feminist archival interventions in the archives.d While DeClue is interested in how Walker uses archival text to produce still and moving silhouettes, it is interesting to see how she discovers the intervention Walker creates to bring to light the undocumented violence registered on the bodies of Black women and revealed through the documented violence of a mulatto man reported to the Bureau of Freedman. DeClue’s interest in Walker’s archival process revealed the vast oversight of Black women’s experience.
Resources
This website was created by Jaimee A. Swift (she/her) and is the executive director, creator,of the webiste. This Black feminist advocacy organization is dedicated to uplifting and centering Black women and gender expansive people's radical activism in Africa and in the African Diaspora. Rooted in intersectional and transnational Black feminisms and Womanisms, we are committed to empowering Black transgender, queer, and cisgender radical women and gender expansive activists by centering their political, intellectual, and cultural contributions to the field of Black Politics across time, space, and place in Africa and the African Diaspora. Black women focused on justice in archives is underrepresented in Society of Georgia Archivists membership. Perhaps SGA can partner with this organization to create a more inclusive membership.
Society of Georgia Archivists is modeled after Society of American Archivists. SAA was wounded in 1936 and is North America's oldest and largest national professional association dedicated to the needs and interests of archives and archivists. SAA represents more than 6,200 professional archivists employed by governments, universities, businesses, libraries, and historical organizations nationally. All of the work undertaken by SAA on behalf of its members and archives users is guided by the it's vision, mission, and core values.
Northeast Document Conservation Centre (NEDCC)
Founded in 1973, the Northeast Document Conservation Center was the first independent conservation laboratory in the United States to specialize exclusively in the conservation and preservation of paper-based collections. NEDCC provides professional conservation treatment for books, maps, photographs, documents, parchment, papyrus, manuscripts, architectural plans, and works of art on paper. Recently, NEDCC started to focus on oral histories with their Audio Preservation Services and the HBCU radio preservation project. I love how this organization has adjusted to the lack of preservation in a certain demographic and would like to see SGA implement similar initiatives.
References
Smith, H. A. (2022). “Wholeness Is No Trifling Matter”: Black Feminist Archival Practice and The Spelman College Archives. Black Scholar, 52(2), 16–27. https://doi-org.libdata.lib.ua.edu/10.1080/00064246.2022.2042764
Millward, J., Willoughby-Herard, T., Carter, L., Tribbett, K., & Turenne, E. (2022). Part Typewriter, Part Divination: A Black Feminist Approach to Black Digital Archives and Preserving the Papers of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home. Journal of Intersectionality, 5(1), 53–69. https://doi-org.libdata.lib.ua.edu/10.13169/jinte.5.1.0006
DeClue, J. (2022). "The Archive and the Silhouette: Framing Black Feminist Avant-Garde Cinema", Visitation: The Conjure Work of Black Feminist Avant-Garde Cinema. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv3029w8t