Introduction

Marcia Black (she/her), Director of Black Bottom Archives, is a proud Detroiter, abolitionist, Black queer feminist archivist, memory worker, a cultural organizer, and a dear friend of mine. She is guided by a commitment to Black liberation and utilizes a Black queer feminist archival praxis in her work to ensure that Black people’s agency, Black cultural memory practices, and Black liberation are always honored and centered in preservation work. Her life’s mission is to preserve and share the stories of those whose stories are often excluded from our telling of Black history because of patriarchal violence. Learn more about Marcia here.

Tracy Drake is a member of The Blackivists collective and Director of Special Collections and Archives at Reed College, focused on acquiring, preserving, and providing access to the historical and cultural records of the college. As an information professional, Tracy strives to provide equitable access to the stories of the Black experience. She believes in confronting difficult topics in our collective historical record while encouraging community archival practice. A graduate of Eastern Illinois University with a BS in African American Studies, an MA in history from Roosevelt University, and an MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2018, she was chosen as a member of the American Library Association class of Emerging Leaders. Her scholarship and research focus on anti-racism in society and information. As Director of Special Collections and Archives, Tracy is responsible for the care, development and leadership of RCSA collections of rare books, archives, manuscripts and artifacts and the library’s engagement with historical research and programming. Tracy support students needing assistance navigating and locating primary sources through individual research consultations and classroom instruction.

Interviews

Marcia’s Interview

CD: Can you share more about yourself, your background, and experiences, particularly those that may have influenced you to pursue a role in archives and the work you’re currently doing?

MB: Yes, so, I was born in Detroit and raised in different places throughout the South as a military kid, and when I graduated from high school it was also around the time that Trayvon Martin was murdered, and I had an interest in getting politically activated. That was difficult to do because of where I was at in Florida and just how white it was. I also really missed home and really missed family, so I looked to moving back to Detroit to get politically involved in a college here to study social work, and I eventually ended up changing my major to sociology and political science. I started doing environmental justice organizing work and eventually started doing work around racial equity, gender justice, and abolition, and throughout all of those different organizing experiences and also classroom experiences where I got to get exposed to archives, I started to get an interest in storytelling. I think one of the ways that I got politically activated was through watching documentaries and hearing people talk about different issues, and so I really saw the impact that storytelling, the narrative, had to transform people and transform our conditions. I wanted to figure out how to get involved in that. I went to an archive for the first time around 2014, and had a research question that was originally wanting to do some sort of paper about Black women doing communist organizing in Detroit. I got redirected to doing something different which was on Erma Henderson, the first Black city council woman, first Black city council woman president, mentor to Coleman Young and learned a lot about her. Her whole collection is there, but then I still had this question about why those stories weren’t there. Then, as I got politicized around Black, queer feminism, one of the major types of violence that women and gender nonconforming people experience is literally being erased from history, literally, our contributions being erased. So, again, I wanted to find a way to rectify that and not to recreate that, knowing that I am of that tradition. How do I make sure that my history– my community’s history– is preserved and available for future generations? That felt like work that can only be self-initiated in the way that we look to university or city archives or governmental archives. When you’re working outside of the state, outside of the system, you can’t look to the system to fulfill those types of needs. So how do we do it in a way that’s community led, community sustainable? Then a different experience I had was with AmeriCorps. They had a public allies program here in Detroit. You got matched with different nonprofits and community orgs, and I got matched with the Arab American National Museum, and it’s the only museum that documents and is dedicated to the history of Arab Americans. There’s not many places focusing on that type of history. So I think– in addition to just getting exposed to a different culture– I think, especially in the context of just the relationship between Black and Arab people in Detroit especially and the tensions that exist, but then also as we get to know each other, the very much overlapping histories and experiences that come with living in a white supremacist world. So, I think I learned a lot from how they took control over their narrative and told their story.

Place and race and gender are a lot of the things that surround the work I feel energized to do. And always from this perspective of filling what is always going to be a gap of history and knowledge about Black people because of the ways that we’ve been erased and our narratives have been distorted that all of this goes towards the aim of repairing that and also repairing community and building– seeing this as a tool to build power. We build power with our stories, we flex our power with our stories. So much of what’s happening in Palestine right now is demonstrating the power of narrative, and yeah, that’s work that I want to be a part of, too.

CD: How would you describe the work of an archivist to someone who isn’t familiar with it?

MB: Yes, I would say, in short, the role of an archivist is to help preserve the stories that we decide are important to us, and that just looks a lot of different ways. There’s so many different methods of preserving and sharing stories. I think that’s also a part of archiving, but I try not to be limited to technique or training for how we decide who’s an archivist. So, being able to see your auntie as a archivist, the one who’s maintaining the scrapbook or maintaining the genealogy tree, or your friend who’s always taking photos. I’m of the belief that if the intention is there of contributing to preserving it, and you’re taking the action to do the thing, then you are that person holding that role, these hats are always transitioning. Who I was 3 years ago is not, you know, who I am today. And so, yeah, I think also that that definition is important to me, because I think a part of my role or interest as a community archivist is organizing my community to see themselves as being archivists and as being capable of contributing to the work of preserving our histories. And so, it is important to not be limited to this particular profession, or a certain type of degree, or a certain type of training, but just naming the organic ways that folks are already taking action to preserve history and supporting them with doing that in the best way that they can.

CD: So, on that note, are there particular skills or technical processes that have helped you carry out the work that you do that you remember learning like in your training or education, in school or outside of school? And this can be anything from basic archival principles, or even strategies that you found in other disciplines or other work.

MB: I do know about things like accessioning and deaccessioning. I will say MOUs, writing MOUs– even though I don’t operate within an institutional, archive, or traditional archive– I know how they operate. I will say that as a community archivist who is dedicated to creating an independent community led, community sustained organization that that does still require relationships with the other archival institutions that exist. I feel like that training has given me the knowledge to be able to negotiate that relationship in a way that benefits myself, where I don’t know that, if I didn’t have the knowledge or understanding of the inner workings or the structure, I would be able to do that. I especially think, as a person who took an interest in learning some of the nontraditional ways for archives to function, that I’m able to lead some of that creative ideation around how archives can be in relationship with community and do it in a way that’s community led. Being in school allowed me to do that type of research, to study those types of tactics, to think about how to implement it. So, that feels important, but in terms of just the tech–I mean– yeah. I know spreadsheets because I mean, know everything needs a unique ID. I know that I have an idea of the different methods of organizing materials. Definitely, I don’t think that I would be able to do that before. So, I have expertise in that, but I will say the most important thing about being a community archivist is relationship building, and that’s something that I got through my organizing experience and just through my day to day life. It’s like the technical skills are one thing, but you know, in complete opposition to how we understand the role of an archivist in an a university that doesn’t require face to face community interaction, especially if your role is just processing collections. If I’m operating outside of that, in order for me to even get the materials to process, I have to go out and ask for the materials, and then we’re in a moment where we’re not being documented. I mean, we are being documented, right? We are being surveilled, but there’s not necessarily a cultural practice of documenting and preserving. So, I also need to be able to support the work of encouraging that documenting and preserving to even have something to preserve. As a community archivist, when someone donates their collection to us, whatever that looks like–donates their artifacts, donates their things– that’s not the end of our relationship. That’s different from other archives where I don’t think it’s always expected that you maintain a relationship with the donor or that it’s a drawn out, long-term investment. So, I think, above all, the relationship building has been the most important skill to do this work. But then, I definitely think the technical skills of organizing materials, knowing how to have multiple copies, and respect des fond are important, too.

CD: What do you think are common narratives in your field of work that you challenge intentionally or unintentionally, unintentionally? And do you see your work as existing outside of a traditional archival practice. And if so, how?

MB: Yes, I think I make it a point to challenge the method of going to school as being the only legitimate way to be a trained archivist, and that’s been intentional from the start. That was a part of why I went to school and why I chose to come back home because to me it felt like going back and getting was mine, honestly. This knowledge should just be available to us because it should be a priority that we’re maintaining our history, that that history is available for future generations, that we’re doing that work, and that it’s not just somebody or some entity surveilling us with or without our consent and keeping records of us that we don’t have access to and have no control over the narrative of. I think, other common narratives that you challenge intentionally or intentionally– I mean, first of all, archives are white as fuck. So, I love occupying the role of a person that is not white, that is not a man–not to be ageist– that is not old as fuck, but that chooses to incorporate my values into my practice. I’m not just archiving anything. I’m archiving with a political purpose, with a political commitment, and archives are not known for being political in an obvious way. We know that they’re political, based on our analysis of what their role is, but they don’t always view themselves or describe themselves as being a political entity, even though it is political what you preserve and what you choose not to preserve. So yeah, the idea that anything is objective or you can train yourself out of being biased is impossible. It’s just not true.  That came from my organizing and my gender studies learning around how there is subjective thinking, biased thinking, and everything. I actually don’t think I’m unique because I’m bringing my political values to the work that I do. I think maybe I’m a little bit more unique in that I’m naming it very clearly, that I’m archiving Black people’s things because I want to build Black power. I want to bring us closer to Black liberation. There are plenty of people that are archiving in these institutions that have political values that align with the system, and those things guide them, but because it’s a part of the system, it’s not visible. Because I’m not trying to operate within the state, and the reason that we exist is in direct opposition to the state that doesn’t want us to exist, that feels very much outside of archival practice. I know at this point there’s so much literature nowadays that there’s enough pushback around anybody being objective–but when we talk about the foundational principals guiding this version of archiving, those white men thought that they were objective. We know that their original reason for having records largely was about recording commerce and business. So, the methods that were created to preserve commerce and business cannot be the methods that I’m utilizing to preserve my community’s history because that’s not why I’m doing it.

CD: So who would you say your audience is with your work? Have there made multiple or different audiences for different projects or things you’ve worked on?

MB: I think my intended prioritized audience is always Black people, and then I think beyond that, once you put something on the Internet, you really don’t have control over who your audience is. I think there’s always that aspect of people that are in academic environments that want to support community research or amplify community stories. I think there’s an element of engaging with those types of folks. I think at this point, with the type of archiving work that we’re trying to do, I think we’re also expanding our audience to more political-minded folks, or you know, the fact that we’re trying to document what Black people would like to see as reparations. The intended audience for this thing is Black people, but it’s meant to build power. So, the people that we need to be presenting it to are the people that we’re demanding things from. So, I think that’s the flip side of the counter-narrative work. You counter the thing both by confronting the thing, but also there has to be a reason that’s independent of the state. So, this work of collecting oral histories is also an opportunity for intergenerational relationship building. It’s also an opportunity for people to get politically activated and be directed to different ways to get activated. Yeah, so I would say my always intended and prioritize audience is Black people, in whatever form or wherever they’re at, wherever they’re located, whatever position that they’re coming from for how they’re engaging. And then, I think, independent of that, anybody else who wants it. So, I very much see my practice being centered around Black stories, specifically the stories of women, queer, and trans people. But then also a lot of movement work. I feel a special responsibility of making sure that our movement is documented and preserved, and I think similarly around the story of Black Detroiters.

CD: What do you see as the role of archivists in the field of information, and how is it unique in its functions?

MB:  I think there’s many different roles in the field of information, and they’re broadly tied together with this commitment to supporting and facilitating the sharing of information in all different forms. I think archiving is simply just one of the only ones where its main function is preservation. What we deem is valuable has to be preserved, but even just thinking about how we relate to libraries, it’s like, the libraries are building the catalogs, but decades from now, if we find it necessary to preserve those catalogs, the archivists are the ones that are going to do that. There is a connection because there are some aspects of archiving around how you make your collection accessible, and so there’s a connection there with librarians, and even the fact that the archives are usually housed within the libraries, there’s collaboration there. Archivists are unique in that the main priority is preservation, and you can’t preserve the thing without sharing the thing. You can’t preserve the thing without creating the thing. So all of the field is contributing to that aspect, and how we contribute is by preserving it.

CD: I feel like you kind of already answered the next question–how does the type of repository institution you work for influence types of projects you work on and your overall organizational processes? Because you do identify as a community archivist, and I think that, as you were saying, your focus is on Black people, the community, and preserving those stories. Whereas, in academia, for example, you kind of have to fall in line with whatever they value. Whereas with community archives, as I understand it, the community also has a role in saying what is being preserved, but if you want to speak more to this, feel free.

MB: No, I think that’s it. I think that’s it on that one.

CD: Okay. And then the last question is, what have been the most rewarding or enjoyable projects that you worked on?

Marcia and Chanelle at the Black Bottom Street View exhibit in June 2023.MB: Right now the Sankofa Community Research Project feels really enjoyable to me, and I think because this is gonna be my first time leading a project where I’m using storytelling in this way to directly impact something that’s happening right now it just feels really amazing because that’s why I wanted to do this work. It’s a community-led, Black Detroiter-led project to study the Black Bottom and Paradise Valley community, which was a historically Black community in Detroit that was torn down in the sixties as part of federal urban renewal agendas that were happening across the country to displace Black communities, and a lot of those communities were replaced with highways. So in our case, part of the land that was destroyed was replaced by I-375. Now that they’re trying to tear that highway down and turn it into a boulevard, we’re using this research as an opportunity to explore what the consequences were of the destruction of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley and to collect oral histories as a part of that process from folks who used to live in Black Bottom or Paradise Valley–Black Detroiters– who can speak to what happened, how that impacted their family, and what would they like to see as part of reparations for this new development that’s going to happen with I-375. Similar work is happening all around the country. I think one of the most popular ones is what’s happening in Rondo in Saint Paul, Minnesota where, similarly, there was a Black community that was destroyed, and over the past few years, they’ve been in the process of having the community decide what repair would look like. So, they’ve been able to even establish an inheritance fund for descendants. They’ve been talking about community land trust and just ways to make sure that the Black folks that were impacted have some sort of investment as part of this new development.

CD: Period. That’s what’s up. Thank you for sharing that. Is there anything else that you would like to share that you think could be helpful for aspiring archivists or information professionals.

MB: Something that I would think about and that I continue to think about is how important it is for us to also think about preserving our own stories as much as we’re trying to convince other people to preserve their stories and being able to use the skills that we learn to also do that work for ourselves. I think something that I’m learning, and I think it’s true for any maybe helping profession or care profession, is you do the thing for other people that sometimes you forget to do it for yourself. Even with thinking about ways to get experience practicing on yourself–how are you organizing your things? How are you thinking about that? How are you applying that in your own family? I would encourage somebody who’s interested in doing this to feel curious thinking about what around them they would like to see preserved and start to think about how you can contribute to that happening even outside of a school environment. I think, especially if you’re interested  in a role as a community archivist, starting to assess what role you want to play in preserving the stories of the communities you’re a part of as a starting place. It doesn’t have to be the only place, but it’s a place to begin, to get curious, and practice.

Tracy’s Interview

CD: Can you share about yourself and your background experiences, particularly those experiences that may have influenced you to pursue a role in archives and other work that you’ve done?

TD: So, I didn’t have a straight path to archives. I was an undergraduate, getting my bachelor’s degree in African American Studies. I knew that I wanted to go on and get, at that point in time, a PhD in history. So at the end of my junior year going into my senior year, I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do over the summer. Then I started looking for internships back in Chicago where I was from, and I actually applied for an internship at the Chicago History Museum and got it. As a part of the Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago History Project, I did research in the archives to find objects to support the stories that were being developed by these historians and authors related to Chicago history. It was exciting for me because I always have been really interested in history. Then I left there, went back to school, graduated, and then I ended up going to Roosevelt University to get a master’s in history. The plan before that was to go get a PhD, but you know, life happens and things change. So, I was like, ‘What am I gonna do after graduation with this master’s in history?’ I no longer wanted to get a PhD, so I thought about it, and I was like, ‘I really did enjoy my time working at the Chicago History Museum, working in the archives.’ That summer I took on the role as a researcher, too. I was doing an independent research project on the Great Migration, so I saw it from both sides of the field. I saw all these different world class research institutions within the city of Chicago. I was studying Black history and finding out the sources that were out there and the stories that I was able to tell, and I just really enjoyed that experience. So, I made this grandiose announcement to my family that I was going to get a master’s degree in library and information science, then I applied for UW- Madison and the University of Illinois. I went for visits to both of those schools and then I just made my choice to go to U of I for a bunch of different reasons. So, that’s basically how I got into the field.

CD:  Thank you for sharing that. How would you describe the work of an archivist to someone who isn’t familiar with it?

TD: I think that in the field we do a terrible job explaining to people what we actually do. They have no idea, and how is it that this field has existed for eons and nobody knows what the heck we’re doing? So, that means that we aren’t doing our job properly. I gave a keynote where I call my mother my first history teacher. For me, she was the first memory worker I knew because she’s the person who preserves our familial history. My cousins who don’t have images of their family members will come to her and ask for pictures. One day my mom came to me and was like, ‘I finally know and understand what you do.’ The way I break it down is, I tell people that all materials have a date when they’re gonna deteriorate. Part of what I do is slow that aging process. That includes creating an environment with a set temperature, is dust-free, and is pest-controlled through building great working relationships with facilities at any institution because those are the folks who handle all of those things. It’s also about building relationships within the community. I always tell people that as an archivist, my word is the only thing that I have. So, I have to follow through and make sure that I’m really intentional about how I move through the world and what I tell people and then be able to deliver on that.

CD: I love that you mention your mom being the first historian and memory worker you knew because so many people in Black families and Black communities do preservation work. Even if archivists have this “formal” training or background, it’s connecting the dots that this kind of work already exists in our families and communities.

TD: That idea comes from another member of The Blackivists, Stacie Williams. In 2020 we did a bunch of interviews as members of The Blackivists, and there’s an interview that she does with Chicago Magazine, and she uses the term “memory worker,” and they ask her to explain it. She explained it so beautifully. She said that we as Black and Brown people have always collected and preserved our own history of our communities and that calling them memory workers gives honor and pays homage to those people who came before us who don’t have the title of archivist, the formalized training, or people who have been traditionally locked out of this field because of discrimination or racism.

CD: Are there particular skills or technical processes that help you carry out the work that you that you do, that you remember learning in your training or education?

TD: I still have my preserving archives and manuscript book, and sometimes I have to go in there and look at specific things. I also try to keep myself abreast of what’s going on in the field, and I think that’s really important. I still read articles and read about new directions the field is going in. I also go to trainings. Last year, the last training I went to was a digital archives specialist training at SAA. I also always have to keep abreast of copyright law. I think that it is important to not just depend upon the specific skills that you learned in school because a lot of that is theory, right? While theory is really important, things look a lot different out in the field. I’ll keep doing professional development forever.

CD: Who is or has been your audience in your work? Or have there been multiple audiences or different audiences depending on the type of project you’re working on?

TD: Before coming to Reed College, I worked at the Chicago Public Library for 4 and a half years at the Vivian G. Harsh archive which was the predominantly African American-focused collection. We didn’t get a lot of community folks in there doing research with the archives, it was lots of researchers in academia, grad students, and people from all over the world who would come to that institution. I think that’s the case with a lot of archival institutions. You might get a community member every now and then who has some interest in it or a young student who’s doing a high school report or something like that. Those were just much fewer. We did have some community stuff. There are very small peaks into other community members and how they are using the archives, but I think for the most part it has pretty much been academics.

CD:  This next question, I think, is related. How does the type of repository and overall work for influence the types of projects or collections you work with, and how does it influence your overall organizational processes?

TD: I entered each institution with them having long-existing ways in which they process collections. So, the first institution I worked at, I disagreed with some of the policies they had created because they processed everything at the item level. It took forever to process a collection. Once I had to process a photograph collection, not by myself, but it was like over 20,000 photographs, and there were 3 of us. It took forever. Here, things are a little bit different. Now, I’m the director of this department, so I get to set the policies and rules. So, when I came here everything was processed and organized at the folder level, and I’m like, actually, a better way of looking at is to look at the collection and make decisions based upon the significance of the collection, the person’s relationship to the institution, and then whether it’s gonna be a popular collection by making an assumption of that based upon our audience. Each institution has a way that they organize stuff, but some of the things like DACS, Describing Archival Content– our whole job is about following those rules. So, DACS is gonna be the same no matter where you go. It’s also about money. Each institution has different funding levels. So, that also depends upon how much staff there is. If I was the lone ranger here, then it would be a little different. Maybe I would be processing about 90% of things at the folder level or the box level because I would never get anything done, but because I have a little bit more staff, and we had a little bit more staff at the other place, we’re able to get away with processing stuff at a more granular level.

CD: What have been the most rewarding and or enjoyable projects that you worked on in your career?

TD: I would say that work actually came from working with The Blackivists. It started out with a relationship that I had built with the members of the former Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, helping them to create an oral history project that has started being transferred to the Vivian G. Harsh archive where I used to work. They have been working on it since 2007. It is now 2023, and we’re just getting to the point where these oral histories are finished. I was helping them to understand everything from how to create informed consent forms to storage and the importance of backing up and making multiple copies. So, working with the Illinois chapter of the Panther Party probably has been the most rewarding experience for me. One, I got to meet with people who I literally only read about in history. My kids say that that’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done. I got to hear stories that honestly will never appear in history books. So, I feel like I learned a lot about working with community and building community. When I first met them I was trying to do an exhibit at the Harsh, and I did a call out for material because a lot of their stuff wasn’t preserved. When I asked for stuff that first time nobody sent me anything, but then, a year later, after being around them, going to events, talking to different people, and building relationships I got so much stuff I couldn’t even use in my exhibit. It was all about building trusting relationships and understanding that I am a part of that community, too, and I’m of that community. So, what I do is important because I also live in that community.

CD: What do you think are common narratives in your field of work that you challenge intentionally or unintentionally? Do you see your work as existing outside of traditional archival practice, and if so, how?

TD: I think for one, my very existence in this field is a challenge to this traditional narrative. When I tell people I’m an archivist, their mouth drops, right? I also don’t believe in respectability politics anymore. So, I come to work as is. I don’t feel like the way I dress or look is any indication of what my capabilities are. I’m at this very liberal institution right now, and before that I was at an institution where I would wear a nice shirt and some jeans. I don’t think I ever wore gym shoes, but that has grown over time. I think I’ve earned some capital over time in this field. Every day within this institution I’m trying to move with intention to document the narratives of marginalized groups of people, students, alumni, and everybody who existed in this institution because what I found when I came here is that this institution that I’m in– which is not very far from all of the institutions that exist in this country– has done a very good job of documenting the narratives of old white man, and frankly, I’m tired of it. So, we’re gonna work to challenge those traditional institutional narratives but also tell it from very different perspectives. I believe in creating counter-narratives to institutional narratives. Here at Reed, specifically, I can give this instance. In 2017 they had these big protests on campus, and they were called RARs, Readies Against Racism. They were the students at that time who were challenging the curriculum here at Reed. Students of color had banded together, and there were a lot of protests and a lot of sit-ins in different classes. But we didn’t have the narratives of any of those students, and so what I did when I got here was start an oral history project where we went back and started interviewing those students because that year was the last class of students who had been here during that time. It will continue to grow and be something that we’ll build upon. When I talk about the Black Panthers and creating counter-narratives, the folks who have done the best job of documenting a lot of our civil rights groups is actually the government. Most of the sources that you will look at are the government sources. That’s biased, right? It has its own narrative based around who they think that the Panthers were. So, creating this oral history project was the opportunity to, one, create a counter-narrative to balance out the narrative that the government had already created about them, and then, two, it also empowered the people to tell their own stories because their stories were being told through a lot of scholars and historians. It’s like, wait a minute. You know, these people are still here. Let’s give them the opportunity to actually tell us what happened, and that’s rare that we are close enough to get that information.

CD: Is there any other information you think could be helpful for aspiring archivists or information professionals?

TD: Approach information practices, the theory, and the knowledge with critical engagement and a critical lens. Think about Raquel Flores-Clemons who talks about this colonial approach to archives that, traditionally, we’ve been taught in schools, and approaching that from an anti-colonial perspective. So, the colonial perspective comes in and is like, ‘Oh, let’s take your stuff. We’re gonna take care of this for you by locking it behind these walls. You get to bring your ID to this place, and you get to see it.’ But no. My first thought when I come to a community should not be about taking. I shouldn’t even have in my mind that I’m even gonna get anything from you. I should just be trying to build a relationship with you because you’re of the community that my institution sits within. I always think, ‘What do I owe this community?’ Reed College sits on the southeast side of Portland in a very affluent area, and it’s nestled in its own little world. People love it because it has this beautiful, lush green space, but it’s also a part of the much larger Portland community which has its own issues and problems and is a part of the southeast side. There’s a part of the southeast side further east that is not affluent. So, what do we owe to the people of that community? How do we not isolate ourselves? So, I’ve been doing a lot of work with talking to the Black community here in Portland because there aren’t really a lot of historically Black institutions where they are maintaining collections. For me, when I think about the importance–it’s like what is the first thing that your oppressor tries to rip from you? It’s your history and culture, and so for this place to not have these long-standing cultural institutions that preserve their own history and culture of Black Portland, I’m like, what does that mean for what was supposed to be the survival of Black people here in Portland? It wasn’t supposed to be successful. So, I think we also have to think critically about and critically engage with the policies that we’re putting into place and work with intentionality. I firmly believe in radical empathy as an approach to archiving.

I think, first and foremost, this new group of students should be focused on radical empathy and care and what that looks like in archival practices. I think that we are in this critical moment, and what 2020 and that period taught us is that we need to care not just about the stuff, but we need to care about ourselves, and then we need to care about our donors and the people that we are building connections and community with. Otherwise, I’m not sure how we’ll continue to work within the current framework that we’re in.

About the chapter’s author

Hi! My name is Chanelle Davis, and I’m a Master of Science in Library and Information Science student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I became interested in local history while studying the 20th century history of my hometown, Detroit, in undergrad. After graduating, I began doing community organizing in Detroit and learned about the important role of community archives, storytelling, and oral histories in preserving Black heritage and contributing to liberatory Black futures. Over the last seven years, my academic and professional endeavors have been molded by my interests in working with youth in education and holistic development, social justice and human rights advocacy, and connecting with the rich history of Black communities in the United States.  I hope to do work in community archives that inspires young people to be well-informed, compassionate, and empathetic change-makers in their communities.