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Roger C. Schonfeld

10 Feb, 29 tweets, 9 min read

@MellonFdn

This evening I am attending the @MellonFdn's "Storytelling for Justice: How Libraries & Archives Hold History to Account," featuring Elizabeth Alexander (@ProfessorEA), Jarrett Martin Drake (@jmddrake), Carla Hayden (@LibnOfCongress) & Kelly Lytle Hernández (@klytlehernandez)

@ProfessorEA

In the opening talk, @ProfessorEA describes some of the Mellon's support of work to advance "the sacred and urgent mission of increasing equity in archival work."

First question: Archives are treasure troves. After lots of work in them, we find something wonderful. What was an archival discovery that deeply affected you and the trajectory of your work?

Carla Hayden: Describes seeing the papers of Frederick Douglass, one of her heroes bc of his emphasis on literacy. Serendipitously found his thoughts, in his own hand, on Lincoln's assassination. Seeing the emotion jumping off the page.

Hayden later learned that she only discovered the item bc it had been misfiled. This has helped her generate her commitment to improving discovery of archival collections.

Kelly Lytle Hernández: I was taught that you show up at an archives & work with what is there. But the stories that I cared about had not been told from the perspective of the folks most affected: undocumented, overpoliced, etc. We need to find and build the archives.

Lytle Hernández: Tonight I want to talk about getting access to policy records, which are notoriously difficult. I worked with the ACLU to get access to LAPD records that had never been seen before and were on track for destruction.

Lytle Hernández: One gem was a use of force file from a helicopter that identified a car without headlights on, chase them down on foot and by air, and shoot Alonzo Simmons. LAPD said he was a GTA suspect and deserved this shooting. Reparative work for those most impacted.

Alexander: What does it mean for historians and researchers to be able to reconstruct the record? There is a transformation that takes place. The work required to gain access to an FBI file is another example. The repair work has so many applications.

Drake: I worked at the Maryland State Archives on a project about the legacy of slavery. Uplifting narratives of people who fled slavery and those who assisted them. The Eastern Shore counties were a special focus.

Drake: There was a free Black man John Brown who in the 1850s in Kent Country helped three enslaved individuals escape. He was jailed for 6 years per enslaved individual he helped escape. He died in prison, shot by prison officers, allegedly for having a razor blade.

Drake: Our obligation is to hold history to account and to do that we must continue the unfinished project of abolition.

@BeineckeLibrary

Alexander: What was it like to use the @BeineckeLibrary as a Yale undergrad for African American Studies? Drake: I didn't know that I could become a professional archivist. Seeing the James Weldon Johnson Collection, papers of Langston Hughes, was moving.

Hayden: We had the neighborhood libraries open in Baltimore during the uprising following the death of Freddie Gray. In the moment, we helped people channel their anger, show them context. I often think of the Rosa Parks papers, which Library of Congress was able to digitize.

Alexander: Hayden is yards away from the impeachment trial. Hayden: Describes efforts to gather materials and record stories from Black Lives Matters plaza, the insurrection, the impeachment/trial, etc. Ensuring the story is documented.

Lytle Hernández: Explaining the concept of "rebel archives," collecting the documents and ephemera that evade police destruction. Many people work with such archives in a variety of ways. We need to ensure we are retaining the rebel archive.

Lytle Hernández: Even before the uprisings this summer, LA was on the precipice of moving past the era of mass incarceration & we wanted to document the voices of those from South Central, Watts, East LA, etc, who have borne the burden of excessive policing & overincarceration.

Lytle Hernández: We're collecting ephemera, oral history, mix tapes, love letters, police records, etc. Community members are driving and selecting what gets preserved. Thanks to Mellon for supporting this work.

Alexander: I am hearing about individual lives, private things, letters, without any intention of them being seen outside that context.

@documentnow

Drake: Recommends amazon.com/African-Americ…. And @documentnow . How do we recognize need for privacy and efforts to avoid the archive?

Lytle Hernández: Emphasizes the importance of having folks from the affected communities charged, in perpetuity, with managing and protecting their records.

Hayden: It's important that stories stay in communities but also that they not be excluded from the larger narratives. Alexander: Yes, that is the hard work of reintegrating American history.

Lytle Hernández: Our UCLA Million Dollar Hoods is a big data project gathering info on policing and incarceration. Probably one of the few Black and Indigenous led big data teams in the country. The story that comes out looks a lot different as a result.

Alexander: Having the ability to look at something and see and know why it is relevant and what are the consequences of it, and many eyes and angles with that perspective, that is the importance of the work.

Attendee q on what data are necessary to reform the US criminal justice system? Drake: Reform is incompatible with Black life. We have an abundance of data. I arrive at an abolitionist praxis & politics. I am looking for data to build the type of world where we want to live.

Lytle Hernández: Very interesting remarks about the transition from enslavement to Jim Crow to mass incarceration and will there be liberation now? Or simply a new vise? This is why documentation of this moment is just so important now.