Our Collective Power: Addressing Community Needs Through Archives and History

As a socially, culturally and politically engaged archivist who represents the legacies of my ancestors and the Black archivists, librarians, collectors, bibliophiles and memory workers who established our path, my contributions to their fields and society at large are hyper-focused on documenting the first-person perspective of groups who have not historically been considered a hegemonic force shaping mainstream culture.

My presentation will focus on the strategies developed within social movement-based archives over the last ten years. I will discuss the impetus to create social movements and community and personal archives by activists, artists, business people, and cultural heritage workers. My paper will highlight collaborations between The Blackivists and Sixty Inches from Center, the socially engaged art practices of Honey Pot Performance and the Floating Museum, and the needs for proper representation of the Black community through the preservation of the Johnson Publishing Company Archives. I will discuss my responsibilities as a community and institutional archivist to support the work being done in both contexts. My mission of increasing representation through documentation includes the developing and implementing of preservation strategies to ensure the sustainability of amassed materials in all forms including physical and digital matter.