Scattered and fugitive things : how Black collectors created archives and remade history /
"During the first half of the twentieth century, the efforts of archivists like Arturo Schomburg or Howard University librarian Dorothy Porter shaped the Black imagination and the direction of social and political movements. Every act of acquisition was an argument about the nature of the meani...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Columbia University Press,
[2024]
|
| Series: | Black lives in the diaspora.
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | "During the first half of the twentieth century, the efforts of archivists like Arturo Schomburg or Howard University librarian Dorothy Porter shaped the Black imagination and the direction of social and political movements. Every act of acquisition was an argument about the nature of the meaning of Black history. These decisions determined which stories would persist or disappear in the archival spaces of Black memory. In Scattered and Fugitive Things, Laura E. Helton follows these archival efforts across the storylines of six collectors. Their biographies reflect the diverse trajectories of diasporic thinkers in the United States. The self-taught Afro-Puerto Rican bibliophile Arturo Schomburg. Virginia-born Alexander Gumby was a working-class denizen of Harlem's gay underground and a prolific scrapbook maker. Vivian Harsh, the daughter of formerly enslaved parents, organized a collection on Chicago's South Side. Librarian Dorothy Porter became a central character in the Howard University intellectual scene and served briefly at the National Library of Nigeria. Virginia Lee stayed in the South, working within (and sometimes secretly against) the limits of Jim Crow restrictions on Black reading spaces. Historian L. D. Reddick served as curator of Schomburg's collection in the 1940s before joining the southern civil rights movement as its participant-chronicler. In a racially segregated information landscape, these archivists, as well as other Black thinkers, necessarily made their arguments through files and filing systems as well as through poetry and prose. The making of information systems is deeply entwined with Black intellectual history, and this book recovers that strain of practical criticism"-- |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | xx, 305 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [263]-289) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780231212748 0231212747 9780231212755 0231212755 |