(re)Imaging Archives: Impact of Black Voices in Community Movement, Arts and Education – Sept. 25, 2024

Post contributed by Leah M. Kerr, Our Story, Our Terms Project Archivist

DATE: Wednesday, September 25, 2024

TIME: 11:30-1 ET, 1:30-3 ET, 3:30-5 ET

LOCATION: Zoom webinars (please register to receive links)

Please join Our Story, Our Terms (OSOT) Project Archivist, Leah M. Kerr and her colleagues explore the idea of “(re)Imaging” as the process of updating, recreating, and adding to the representation of Black activists and artists in the predominately white libraries and archives. As if a switch has been flipped, more artists are turning to primary source images for use in their expressions of their lives. More movement activists are recognizing the need to document themselves for their own records, and to provide truth to future historians. These changes also require archivists to accurately describe, arrange, and gather the materials of previously underrepresented communities.

In three conversations, Black activists, artists and archivists gather to discuss the thoughts behind capturing primary sources as art; the need to correctly document actions in movement work; and the steady change of recognizing the need for archives to reexamine traditionally white patriarchal and hierarchical practices that have limited the thoughts on the collection and availability of Blackness in special collections.

Image: (noun) a physical likeness or representation of a person, animal, or thing, photographed, painted, sculptured, or otherwise made visible.

Order of Conversations –

Conversation 1 (11:30am-1:00pm ET ): Say it Loud – Telling Our Stories - explores evolving methods of capturing, interpreting, and documenting Black stories.

REGISTER here.

jina valentine, artist

Charlie Cobb, SNCC, journalist/author

Alissa Rae Funderburk, oral historian

John Gartrell, archivist

Conversation 2 (1:30pm-3:00pm ET): Fight the Power – New Memory Keeping  – offers discussions around the recognition of Memory Work, its applications, and implications for strengthening Black representation.

REGISTER here.

Zakiya Collier, archivist and memory worker

Malu Brooks, organizer, archivist, PhD candidate

Judy Richardson, SNCC, filmmaker/educator

Michael Morris, museum director

Conversation 3 (3:30pm-5pm ET): Alright – Strengthening the Black involvement in Archives  – making Black memory work a movement rather than a moment requires community education, diversifying staff in libraries and archives, and simplifying methods of institutional documentation. But how do we make these things happen?

REGISTER here.

Leah M. Kerr, archivist

Ida Jones, archivist, historian

Holly Smith, College Archivist, Spelman College

*banner image credit – Aorist gris-gris: (Institutio Oratoria, anise, bearberry, mugwort) by jina valentine, 2012