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Scattered and fugitive things : how Black collectors created archives and remade history / Laura E. Helton.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Black lives in the diasporaPublisher: New York : Columbia University Press, [2024]Copyright date: ©2024Description: xx, 305 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
  • still image
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780231212748
  • 0231212747
  • 9780231212755
  • 0231212755
Other title:
  • How Black collectors created archives and remade history
Subject(s):
Contents:
Value, Order, Risk : Experiments in Black Archiving -- Thinking Black, Collecting Black : Schomburg's Desiderata and the Radical World of Black Bibliophiles -- A "History of the Negro in Scrapbooks" : The Gumby Book Studio's Ephemeral Assemblies -- Defiant Libraries : Virginia Lee and the Secrets Kept by Good Bookladies -- Unauthorized Inquiries : Dorothy Porter's Wayward Catalog -- A Space for Black Study : The Hall Branch Library and the Historians Who Never Wrote -- Mobilizing Manuscripts : L. D. Reddick and Black Archival Politics.
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"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Shelving location Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction New 026.3231 H484 Available 33111011347552
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

During the first half of the twentieth century, a group of collectors and creators dedicated themselves to documenting the history of African American life. At a time when dominant institutions cast doubt on the value or even the idea of Black history, these bibliophiles, scrapbookers, and librarians created an enduring set of African diasporic archives. In building these institutions and amassing abundant archival material, they also reshaped Black public culture, animating inquiry into the nature and meaning of Black history.

Scattered and Fugitive Things tells the stories of these Black collectors, traveling from the parlors of the urban north to HBCU reading rooms and branch libraries in the Jim Crow south. Laura E. Helton chronicles the work of six key figures: bibliophile Arturo Schomburg, scrapbook maker Alexander Gumby, librarians Virginia Lee and Vivian Harsh, curator Dorothy Porter, and historian L. D. Reddick. Drawing on overlooked sources such as book lists and card catalogs, she reveals the risks collectors took to create Black archives. This book also explores the social life of collecting, highlighting the communities that used these collections from the South Side of Chicago to Roanoke, Virginia. In each case, Helton argues, archiving was alive in the present, a site of intellectual experiment, creative abundance, and political possibility. Offering new ways to understand Black intellectual and literary history, Scattered and Fugitive Things reveals Black collecting as a radical critical tradition that reimagines past, present, and future.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [263]-289) and index.

Value, Order, Risk : Experiments in Black Archiving -- Thinking Black, Collecting Black : Schomburg's Desiderata and the Radical World of Black Bibliophiles -- A "History of the Negro in Scrapbooks" : The Gumby Book Studio's Ephemeral Assemblies -- Defiant Libraries : Virginia Lee and the Secrets Kept by Good Bookladies -- Unauthorized Inquiries : Dorothy Porter's Wayward Catalog -- A Space for Black Study : The Hall Branch Library and the Historians Who Never Wrote -- Mobilizing Manuscripts : L. D. Reddick and Black Archival Politics.

"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"-- Provided by publisher.

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